ToolsThatRank / measured data
One dataset, two devices
Desktop vs Mobile CTR Across 38 Sites. The Same Queries, Two Very Different Click Rates.
Every Search Console performance report hides a device filter, and most site owners never open it. We did, on every property in the account: 26,719 query-device rows across 38 properties with device data, window 2026-08-18 to 2026-09-14.
Fleet-wide, desktop shows 130,977 impressions at 0.38% CTR while mobile shows 83,201 impressions at 0.58%. Mobile is only 38.5% of impressions but earns a higher click rate on the same underlying pages. On 4 of the 38 sites, mobile CTR beats desktop outright despite far fewer impressions.
Verified 2026-09-30 against the Search Console searchAnalytics endpoint. Harvest: 26,719 [query, device] rows, 38 properties with device rows (43 in the account), window 2026-08-18 to 2026-09-14, dataState final.
The split
What the device rows show
The harvest groups every query by device. The full device split across the fleet:
| DEVICE | IMPRESSIONS | CLICKS | CTR | AVG POSITION (IMPR-WTD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | 130,977 | 494 | 0.38% | 26.3 |
| Mobile | 83,201 | 479 | 0.58% | 10.5 |
| Tablet | 1,811 | 32 | 1.77% | 8.2 |
Desktop produces 61% of impressions but only 49% of clicks. The gap comes with a rank difference: the desktop row's impression-weighted position is 26.3 versus 10.5 on mobile. The same site ranks far better on the phone in its pocket than the screen on the desk.
A third of queries appear on both devices. Only 5 of them exceed 500 impressions on both sides, and on those shared high-volume queries the CTR gap is small (within 0.1 points on 4 of 5). The fleet-wide gap is driven by which queries each device sees, not by one device clicking harder on identical queries.
Tablet has 1.77% CTR on 1,811 impressions. That is 32 clicks; the rate is real, the sample is small, and we say so instead of building a tablet narrative.
Per-site
The 4 sites where mobile beats desktop
Only 4 properties clear 1,000 impressions on both devices. On all 4, mobile CTR is higher than desktop. Two extremes from that group:
- ingredientcalculator.com: 9,711 desktop impressions at 0.28% CTR against 2,031 mobile impressions at 3.45%. The mobile CTR is 12.3 times the desktop rate.
- lakelevelnow.com: 4,359 desktop impressions at 0.39% against 9,055 mobile impressions at 0.92%. Here mobile is also the larger audience.
31 of 38 properties have at least one mobile impression; 7 have none. Mobile is not a niche slice of this fleet, it is under half the impressions and the majority of the clicks on some sites.
Your own numbers
How does your desktop CTR compare to your mobile CTR?
Read both device rows for one property from the Search Console performance report and type the totals below. The tool divides clicks by impressions per device and shows the gap in percentage points. Everything runs in this page; nothing is sent anywhere.
With a positive gap, mobile is the stronger surface for clicks on your queries; with a negative one, desktop is. A single property's totals can flip with one ranking change, so read the gap as a signal, not a verdict.
Reading it
What the comparison does and does not say
The 0.58% mobile CTR is not a mobile bonus. Mobile rows skew toward queries where this fleet already ranks on page one (weighted position 10.5), while desktop impressions concentrate in deeper positions (26.3). Position, not device, is doing most of the work in the aggregate gap.
What we can say: if you only read the blended performance report, you are reading a number that mixes two different rank distributions and calling it one CTR. The device filter is one click away in Search Console and it changes the reading on every property we checked.
What we cannot say: whether mobile CTR converts better, or whether fixing a mobile ranking gap moves clicks. This dataset has no revenue and no experiment.
Method
How we measured this
GSC device harvest
One harvest across 43 properties in the account, 28-day window 2026-08-18 to 2026-09-14, requesting [query, device] rows (route D). 26,719 rows returned. 38 properties have device rows; 5 properties returned no rows at all and are excluded, not missing.
Impression weighting
Average position per device is impression-weighted across rows, not a plain mean of query positions. CTR is total clicks over total impressions per device, never averaged from row CTRs.
Per-site pairing
Desktop-vs-mobile comparisons are made within a property only. We never sum a site's desktop rows against another site's mobile rows.
What is not here
No per-query device CTR table for low-volume queries: with most rows at 1 to 3 impressions, per-query device rates would be noise. We publish the fleet split, the 1,000-impression per-device site cohort, and the shared high-volume queries only.
Limits
What this page cannot tell you
The window is 28 days on 38 small sites operated by one person. Tablet conclusions rest on 32 clicks. Queries are anonymous above the privacy threshold, so the device split cannot be joined to landing pages for every row.
Sites where a property returned zero mobile rows are counted as no mobile presence, not as a 0% rate. Two of the 7 mobile-less properties are new domains still inside the sandbox window; calling that a device problem would be wrong.
No ranking, traffic, or revenue outcome is promised.
The operator sells the software described here and owns every site in the dataset.
Search Console is authenticated, so no third party can verify these readings from outside.
Figures are read on the stamped date and change as Search Console reprocesses data.
Related reading. CTR by position, average position, and the zero click pages census, all measured on the same properties.