Click-through rate

Click-through rate measures how often people who saw a link, ad, or search result went on to click it. It is a core measure of how compelling the headline, creative, or snippet was at prompting action.

The formula is clicks / impressions * 100. In paid advertising, CTR feeds into platform quality or relevance scores and can affect cost per click; in organic search, CTR is reported for each query and position, often tracked with campaigns tagged using UTM parameters once the click lands on the site.

CTR is only comparable across similar contexts: a top ad slot or the first organic search result carries a far higher baseline CTR than position ten, so raw comparisons across positions or placements are misleading. A high CTR also does not guarantee value further down the line—if the resulting conversion rate is weak, the click was cheap to get but did not pay off. On mobile in particular, accidental or bot clicks can inflate CTR without reflecting real interest, which is why it is best interpreted alongside engagement rate once the visitor arrives.