Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click after seeing something — most often a search result, but also an ad or an email. If 100 people see your result and 5 click, your CTR is 5%.

Why it matters

In search, CTR reveals whether your title and description are doing their job. A page can rank well and still underperform because the snippet doesn’t compel a click. Rising rankings with flat clicks point straight at the title tag and meta description.

Common misreading

Treating a “good” CTR as a fixed number. It varies enormously by position, query, and channel — the useful comparison is your own CTR over time, or versus the typical rate for that position.