Analytics & Performance
What is click-through rate (CTR)?
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who clicked on something out of everyone who saw it, a search listing, an advert, a social post, an email link. It measures how compelling the headline, snippet or creative was to the audience that encountered it. CTR varies enormously by context and position, so it is best used to compare like with like: the same page’s listing over time, or two versions of the same email.
Where CTR applies
The same fraction, clicks divided by views, reads differently by context. In search results, it measures how well a listing’s meta title and description compete for attention at its position. In email, how compelling the content made the link. In social and ads, how well the creative stopped the scroll. Each context has different mechanics, which is why a single “good CTR” figure does not exist.
Reading CTR honestly
CTR is inseparable from position and context: a search listing at position two naturally earns many times the CTR of position nine for the same quality of title, and branded queries dwarf generic ones. The signal worth acting on is deviation, a page ranking well but earning unusually few clicks for its position often has a title problem, which is one of the cheapest fixes in search marketing. SERP features and AI overviews can also depress CTR for a query without anything being wrong with the listing.
Related terms
Search CTR pairs impressions with clicks on the SERP; downstream, conversion rate decides whether the clicks were worth winning.