Click-through rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the share of people who clicked after seeing you, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
Appear 1,000 times and receive 30 clicks and your click-through rate is 3%.
It exists in both Google Ads and organic search and means the same thing in each.
In organic search it has become the most important number on the report, because AI Overviews absorb clicks without touching rankings or impressions.
Ahrefs found one site in the French rollout with impressions up 183% while clicks fell 1.9%, which reads as growth on any report that leads with impressions.
Calculate it across a whole period rather than averaging daily rates, or a quiet day with 2 impressions carries the same weight as a busy one with 2,000.
A falling rate on steady rankings usually means the results page changed around you rather than that your page got worse.
What this means for you
This is the headline number on the reports I send, in place of average position. It's the one that shows whether being found is still turning into visits.
This one sits under SEO.
Related terms
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