96.98% of Clicks Happen in the Top 10 Search Results

To find out, we analysed billions of clicks and impressions from Google Search Console. Our findings are a good reminder: page one is where the overwhelming majority of clicks and impressions happen.

In August 2025, 96.98% of desktop clicks in the US happened within the top 10 results. Mobile clicks were even higher, with 97.56% happening on the first page of Google:

2025-08-01	Top 10	11-20	21-30	>30
Desktop click percentage	96.98	1.77	0.56	0.7
Mobile click percentage	97.56	1.52	0.49	0.42

On desktop, just 3.03% of clicks occurred outside the top 10. On mobile, that figure was even lower, at 2.43% of clicks.

Looking back over the last two years, this is a very consistent trend. Almost all clicks happen in the top 10 results, never dropping below 95.5% of total clicks:

If we remove the data for the top 10, we can see the clicks attributed to lower-ranking pages more clearly.

Over the past two years, pages outside of the top 10 results have never contributed more than 4.37% of total clicks.

Sidenote

Cumulative clicks and impressions for positions >30 are greater than positions 21-30, because the position >30 bucket includes rankings from 31 through to 1,000.

It’s a similar story for mobile clicks. Over the past two years, most mobile clicks have happened within the top 10 results, never falling below 95.63% of total clicks:

In recent months, the top ten has become even more important for mobile searchers. From June this year, we can see a reduction in mobile clicks to URLs in positions ten and beyond:

Looking at impressions in August, most impressions also happen on the first page of Google: 76% for mobile users and 54.29% for desktop users.

But interestingly, a large percentage of desktop impressions happen beyond position 30: 28.93% of all impressions.

2025-08-01	Top 10	11-20	21-30	>30
Desktop impression percentage	54.29	10.79	5.98	28.93
Mobile impression percentage	76	10.61	3.04	10.35

Given that clicks for URLs beyond position 30 are almost nonexistent, it’s likely that these impressions are registered by bots and scrapers.

Looking at the historical trend, impressions for URLs in positions >30 are trending upwards, while impressions in the top 10 show a corresponding drop.

If this is reflective of a recent surge in bot activity, it might go some way to explaining Google’s deprecation of the &num=100 parameter:

There’s a similar (although less pronounced) trend in mobile impressions too:

Final thoughts

Almost all clicks in organic search—96.95% on desktop, and 97.56% on mobile—happen within the top 10 search results. It seems likely that impressions far beyond those pages are bots and scrapers (and not real people).

Post byRyan Law

Ryan Law is the Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs. Before joining the team, Ryan was CMO at content marketing agency Animalz.

Over the past 13 years, Ryan has been a writer, content strategist, team lead, marketing director, VP, CMO, and agency co-founder. He's worked with companies including Google, Zapier, Textio, Clearbit, and Algolia and hosted workshops and webinars for many more.

Ryan is the creator of two fantasy novels, two writing courses, and many more (less successful) projects.

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