Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the percentage of people who click a link, ad, or result out of everyone who saw it, measuring relevance and appeal.
Click-through rate divides clicks by impressions: if 1,000 people see your search listing and 50 click, your CTR is 5%. It applies to search results, ads, emails, and any link. CTR measures how compelling your offer looks to the people who see it — a strong signal of whether your title, description, and positioning match what the audience wants.
CTR is a diagnostic and an optimization lever at once. In search, a high CTR for your ranking position suggests your title and meta description resonate; a low one is a chance to rewrite them. In email and ads, A/B testing subject lines, copy, and creative lifts CTR directly. As AI overviews capture more queries, sharpening CTR on the results you do earn becomes even more important.