CTR
Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions.
What click-through rate tells you
CTR stands for click-through rate: the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. If your page appeared 1,000 times in search and was clicked 30 times, its CTR is 3%. Search Console reports CTR for queries, pages, countries and devices in its Performance report.
Where to find it
In Search Console's Performance report, turn on CTR and average position, then look at pages or queries with plenty of impressions, a reasonable position and a lower CTR than similar pages. Those are your best candidates for better titles and descriptions. Give changes a few weeks before judging them.
Reading it in practice
A family law firm's divorce page ranks well but gets few clicks. Its title is "Family Law Services". Rewriting it to "Divorce solicitors in Reading: fixed-fee first meeting" and improving the description makes the result much clearer, and clicks rise without any change in position.
Misreadings to avoid
- Comparing CTR across queries with very different positions or results layouts.
- Writing clickbait titles that disappoint visitors.
- Ignoring the effect of AI Overviews and other features on clicks.
- Changing titles every week, so you never learn what worked.
Why it’s worth tracking
CTR shows how attractive your result is compared with others on the page. A low CTR for an important query can mean your title or snippet doesn't match what people want, or that ads, maps and other features push you out of sight. It's also affected heavily by position, so compare like with like.
It also helps you choose between priorities. Improving a page's click-through rate can bring more visits without any change in ranking, which is often faster than trying to climb a position or two.
Terms you’ll see alongside it
- Impressions: How often a page appeared in search results.
- Title tag: The HTML title of a page. It matters for relevance and for whether people click.
- Meta description: An HTML summary of a page that Google may show under the title in results. It isn't a direct ranking factor.
- SERP: Search engine results page: the page of results a search engine shows for a query.
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