The share of people who click after seeing your ad or search result.
Click-Through Rate is clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. It measures how compelling and relevant a listing is to the people who see it, and it applies to both paid ads and organic search results.
In paid search, CTR is a core input to Quality Score, so a higher CTR can lower your cost per click and improve ad position. In organic search, a strong title and meta description can lift CTR and, over time, indirectly support performance.
CTR tells you whether your messaging matches searcher intent at the moment of choice. A high impression count with a low CTR means you are being shown but not chosen, usually a targeting, positioning or copy problem.
Optimising CTR at the expense of quality, for example clickbait titles that pull clicks then fail to convert, wasting spend. CTR should improve alongside conversion rate, not instead of it.
Common questions
Straight answers on how this fits your marketing and build.
It depends heavily on channel, industry and position. Rather than chasing a benchmark, compare against your own history and competitors. The right goal is a rising CTR paired with a stable or rising conversion rate.
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