Glossary

What is click-through rate?

2 min read

Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions. How often the people who saw you chose you.

It is a ratio over the period, not an average of days

The arithmetic trap that applies to every ratio.

Right:  total_clicks / total_impressions
Wrong:  mean(daily_clicks / daily_impressions)

The weighted version lets a Monday with ten thousand impressions count for more than a Sunday with ten, which is correct. The unweighted version treats them as equals, and one quiet day can move the figure visibly.

This is also why a correct CTR chart and its headline do not match. Each point is that day's own ratio; the headline is the period's. That is not a bug and it is worth saying in any interface that shows both.

Why a falling CTR is often good

The least intuitive thing about this metric, and the reason it is the most misread number in search.

CTR falls when a page starts ranking for broader terms. More impressions at worse positions means a smaller share convert, while the page earns more clicks in total. The percentage fell and the outcome improved.

Three more things lower CTR with nothing going wrong:

  • Google answering the query on the results page. Outside your control.
  • A rich result above you taking the clicks that would have been yours.
  • Ranking for the first time on a new page, which starts at zero and climbs.

When a falling CTR is genuinely bad

When impressions and position are both steady and clicks fall. That isolates the one variable you control: what your result says.

A page at position two with a low CTR is a snippet problem. The title or the meta description is not answering the query somebody typed, and that is directly fixable.

Never read CTR alone

A rate with no volume beside it has no direction.

CTR Impressions What it means
Down Up Ranking more broadly. Usually good
Down Flat Something changed in the result. Look
Up Down Smaller, better-matched audience
Up Up The good one

Place impressions and average position next to it, always.

The same ratio appears in email, ads and in-app prompts, and the same rules apply. It is clicks over whatever was shown, and it is meaningless without knowing how many were shown.

The one difference worth knowing is that search CTR is heavily determined by position in a way email CTR is not. Half of the variation in a page's CTR is explained by where it ranks, which makes comparing two pages' CTRs without comparing their positions nearly worthless.

CTR in Notch Metrics

Search Console click-through rate is reported as a ratio over the window rather than the mean of daily rates.

Place it beside clicks, impressions and average position, because those three together are the only way to read it.

How to get average position and CTR from Search Console

Questions

How is click-through rate calculated?
Clicks divided by impressions over the period. Use the period totals rather than averaging the daily rates, which would weight a day with ten impressions equally with a day of ten thousand.
Is a falling CTR bad?
Often not. CTR falls when a page starts ranking for broader terms, so more impressions at worse positions convert at a lower rate while total clicks rise. It also falls when Google answers the query on the results page or a rich result sits above you.
When is a falling CTR a real problem?
When impressions and average position are both steady and clicks fall. That isolates the one variable you control, which is what your result says. A page at position two with low CTR is usually a title or description problem.
Why does my CTR headline not match the chart?
Because each chart point is that day's own ratio and the headline is the period's clicks divided by the period's impressions. They are not supposed to match.
Can I compare CTR between two pages?
Only alongside their positions. Roughly half the variation in a page's search CTR is explained by where it ranks, so comparing two pages' CTRs without comparing their positions is nearly worthless.