CTR (Click-Through Rate)
The percentage of people who clicked after seeing your link, ad, or snippet.
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. CTR = (clicks ÷ impressions) × 100.
Context
CTR is used across SEO (organic search impressions), paid ads (ad impressions), and email (email opens). In each context it measures the same thing: how compelling the creative, headline, or snippet is at converting an impression into engaged action.
In SEO, CTR is both a performance metric and an input to ranking. Google uses engagement signals — including CTR relative to expected CTR at a given position — as a quality signal, meaning a page that gets higher-than-expected CTR for its position can improve its ranking over time.
The #1 organic result on Google captures an average 27.6% CTR; position 5 earns about 7.2%; position 10 drops below 2.5% (Backlinko SERP analysis, 2024). A page ranking 5th with a 12% CTR (higher than position-5 average) is sending engagement signals that often push it up to position 3 over time.
Raw CTR comparisons across different positions are meaningless — a 3% CTR at position 10 is excellent; a 3% CTR at position 1 is catastrophic. Always compare CTR to expected CTR at that position.
Related terms
Services that apply this
More SEO terms
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
How much the page jumps around during load.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)
How fast the page responds to clicks and taps.
Core Web Vitals
Google's three-metric measure of page experience: speed, responsiveness, and stability.
hreflang
Markup that tells Google which language/region version of a page to show.