Paid Search
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
Click-through rate is the percentage of people who click after seeing your ad or listing, calculated as clicks divided by impressions times 100.
It signals how relevant and compelling your message is to the audience seeing it. In paid search a higher CTR also feeds Quality Score, which can lower your cost per click. In organic search, a strong title and meta description drive CTR.
Position accounts for most CTR variation, so raw comparisons across pages tell you very little. The useful analysis is CTR relative to expected CTR at the position the page actually holds. Search Console has the data for this: compare each page's rate against your own site's average at the same position band. Pages well below that line have a snippet problem, not a ranking problem. Rewriting the title usually fixes it. Pages well above it are worth studying, since whatever the title is doing can often be applied elsewhere.
Example
Two ads, same keyword, same position. "Quality Dental Services in Bangkok": 2.1% CTR. "Invisalign from 89,000 Baht, Free First Consult": 6,3% CTR. Same audience, triple the clicks, because one names a price and an offer. That click-through gap flows into Quality Score, so the better ad ends up paying less per click than the worse one it outperforms.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a good click-through rate?
- It varies by position and query type more than by industry. Branded searches often exceed 20 percent, while broad informational terms in low positions may sit near 1 percent. Compare your CTR against your own average for that position, not against a generic benchmark.
- How do I improve CTR?
- Match the title and description to the query intent, put the distinguishing detail first, and give a reason to click that the competing results do not offer. On paid, extensions and assets take up more result space and reliably lift click-through.
Related terms
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