What is CTR (click-through rate)?

Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of people who click a result after seeing it. In organic search, it tells you how attractive your listing is compared with everything else on the page — the other results, ads, maps, videos and AI-generated answers competing for the same attention.

CTR = clicks ÷ impressions × 100

A page shown 4,000 times that gets 120 clicks:
120 ÷ 4,000 × 100 = 3.0% CTR

In Google Search Console, an impression is counted when your result appears on a results page the user loads, even if they never scroll to it, and a click is any click that leads to your site. Google defines these in its Performance report metrics help page.

What drives organic CTR

• Position. The biggest factor. Higher results get more clicks, with a steep drop down the page.
• SERP layout. Ads, a featured snippet, “People also ask”, a local pack or an AI Overview push organic results further down and can answer the query without a click.
• Query type. Navigational searches for a brand often have very high CTR for that brand’s site. Quick factual queries tend to have low CTR because the answer sits on the results page.
• Your snippet. The title tag, meta description, URL and any rich result enhancements are the parts you control.

Improving CTR without clickbait

Focus on pages with many impressions and a CTR below what similar pages on your site get at the same position — that combination means people see you but choose someone else. Then:

• Lead the title with the words searchers use and make the benefit concrete (“with free template”, “2026 prices”, “in 5 steps”) — but only if the page delivers it.
• Write the description as an answer plus a reason to click, roughly 140–160 characters so it isn’t cut short.
• Keep titles within roughly 580–600 pixels on desktop; Google truncates by width, not character count, and rewrites titles that don’t describe the page well.
• Add valid structured data where Google still shows rich results for your content type.

Common mistakes when reading CTR

• Comparing across positions. A 2% CTR is poor at position 1 and excellent at position 9. Compare like with like.
• Mixing branded and non-branded queries. Branded searches inflate averages; filter them out to judge your snippets.
• Trusting the page-level average. A page ranking for 300 queries has 300 different CTRs. Look at the queries that matter most.
• Misleading titles. A promise the page doesn’t keep may lift clicks briefly, but frustrated visitors and Google’s title rewrites cancel it out.

How to check

Search Console shows your real CTR by query and page. To improve the snippet behind it, test new titles and descriptions in the SERP Preview: it renders the desktop and mobile Google result with real pixel-width truncation and character counts, so you can see what searchers will see before you publish.

Frequently asked questions