A Can question

Can an SEO company provide industry benchmarks?

3 min read Cites 2 sources

Yes, but what it can provide about other sites is estimated or borrowed rather than measured, and the useful benchmark report says which is which. A company can compare your site with named competitors using third-party tools, and it can cite published studies about your industry or about search in general. It cannot see competitors’ analytics, and published figures describe someone else’s sample at a past date. The most reliable comparison for your site remains your own history in Search Console and Google Analytics, with outside benchmarks used for context.

What can be put together

A benchmark report can set your figures beside estimates for named competitors: which searches they appear for that you do not, how many sites link to them, and how their pages are structured. It can also cite published studies, for example on how clicks are spread across positions in search results. Each figure should carry its source and date, and the report should separate three things: your measured data, estimates from tools, and figures from published studies.

These industry benchmarks are different from the targets set for your own project. They describe the field around you; your targets describe what the work is meant to achieve on your site.

Reading a published figure

A published benchmark is a measurement of a particular sample, at a particular time, by a particular method, and search behavior changes. AI-generated answers in search results are a current example of why the date and method matter.

In July 2025, the Pew Research Center published an analysis of browsing data from 900 US adults in March 2025. It found: “Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits.” Users who did not see one, it reported, “clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits).” In August 2025, Google wrote in a post on AI in Search and clicks to websites: “Overall, total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year.” The two statements measure different things, one a sample of users’ clicks per visit and the other Google’s total clicks to websites, and neither tells you what is happening to your own traffic.

For benchmarks, the lesson is that a click-through rate by position taken from a study conducted before such changes may no longer describe the results your pages appear in. Ask when any cited study was conducted and what it measured.

The benchmark that matters most

Your own data is the comparison you can trust most: your clicks, impressions, and positions over time in Search Console, and your inquiries and sales in analytics, compared with the same period in earlier years. Outside benchmarks help you judge whether a change is particular to your site or shared across the field, but they cannot replace your own record.

Checking a benchmark before you rely on it

Ask the company to name the source and date of every benchmark it shows you, to mark which figures are measured and which are estimated, and to explain how each one applies to a site like yours. A benchmark without a source, a date, and a method is an opinion presented as a number.

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