What is CTR, and what is a good click-through rate?

For organic search, open the Performance report in Google Search Console. It shows four numbers: clicks, impressions, average CTR and average position. By default it covers the past three months, and you can switch the table to queries, pages, countries, devices or search appearance.

That table is where CTR in Google Search Console becomes useful. A sitewide average blends your brand searches, your blog posts and your service pages into one figure that does not describe any of them very well.

For paid search, Google Ads shows a CTR for each of your ads, listings and keywords. Google adds that a good CTR is relative to what you are advertising and on which networks. It also uses a related idea, "expected clickthrough rate," as one of the three parts of Quality Score, alongside ad relevance and landing page experience.

You will find articles that promise a good click-through rate by industry. Our read: treat them as trivia. CTR moves with things those tables cannot see:

• Where you rank. A result in position one and a result in position eight are not playing the same game.
• What sits above you. Ads, maps, videos and AI-generated answers all take attention before the first organic link.
• What the searcher wanted. Someone searching your company name already knows they want you. Someone asking a broad question may get the answer from the results page and never click anything.
• How Google counts. Search Console explains that if two results from the same site appear for one query, they count as a single impression in the chart total.

So a 2% CTR can be excellent for a broad question where you rank sixth, and a 20% CTR can be weak for your own brand name.

Compare a page with itself, and compare queries at similar positions.

1. In the Performance report, filter to one page.
2. Open the Queries tab and add the Average position column.
3. Sort by impressions and look for queries where you rank in the top few positions but get few clicks.

Those queries are your real opportunities. A page that already ranks near the top with a weak CTR usually has a title or description problem, not a ranking problem. Fixing words is faster than earning rankings.

Most of the gain comes from the words people read before they click.

• Write the title for the person, not the keyword list. Say what the page answers, in the searcher's words. Our guide on how to write SEO titles walks through this.
• Give the description a job. Google may rewrite snippets, but a specific meta description that matches the query still helps.
• Match the intent. If people searching a term want a price and your page hides the price, they will pick the result that shows it.
• Earn rich results where they fit. Google's own case studies on structured data report gains, such as Rotten Tomatoes measuring a 25% higher click-through rate on pages with structured data.
• Change one thing and wait. Rewrite one title, note the date, and compare the next four weeks with the four before. Changing ten things at once tells you nothing.

A low CTR on a paid keyword usually means the ad does not match what that searcher had in mind. Google rates expected CTR as "Above average," "Average" or "Below average," compared with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.

Two things are worth knowing before you obsess over it. Google says Quality Score is a diagnostic tool, and that it is "not an input in the ad auction." Treat a "Below average" label as a pointer to the fix: tighter keyword groups, ad text that repeats the searcher's words, and a landing page that answers that exact search.

• Reading the sitewide average. It moves when your mix of pages changes, even if nothing improved.
• Comparing different positions. A drop in CTR after a ranking jump from page two to page one can still mean many more clicks.
• Ignoring impressions. A 50% CTR on 4 impressions is noise.
• Chasing clicks with bait. A title that overpromises can lift CTR and still lose the customer when the page does not deliver.

CTR tells you how persuasive your result is once people see it. Judge it page by page and query by query, against your own history, and spend your effort where you already rank but do not get the click.