Click-through rate

The click-through rate is a simple division. Your listing was shown a hundred times in the search results and clicked five times: that is five per cent. It is often abbreviated to CTR — the same number, only differently named. There is nothing more to the calculation than that.

It gets confusing because the same term counts something different in different places. In the Google Search Console it refers to unpaid search results, in Google Ads to placed adverts, in a newsletter to emails sent. The numbers typically lie far apart and cannot be compared. Anyone quoting a click-through rate has to say what it refers to.

It is useful because it separates two completely different problems that feel the same. "I am not getting any enquiries" can mean: nobody sees me — in which case impressions are low. Or: everybody sees me and moves on — in which case impressions are high and the click-through rate is low. The one is a question of visibility, the other a question of title, description and expectation. Without that separation, people regularly repair the wrong thing.

What influences the click-through rate is, first of all, position. Further up gets clicked considerably more often than further down, and that overlays almost everything else. After that come the title and description of the listing: does it say what the searcher is looking for, or a general formulation that would fit a hundred others just as well. And finally the intent behind the search — whoever wanted a definition and sees a sales page does not click.

One more point has come along, and it is still young: what else is on the results page has a say. Above the unpaid hits there can be adverts, a map section, a box with hotels — or an AI answer that has already answered the question. The same position can therefore carry a different number of clicks from month to month without anything on your page having changed.

A single click-through rate therefore says little on its own. Ten per cent on a term nobody searches for is worth less than two per cent on one searched a thousand times a month. What makes sense is always to look at four numbers side by side: impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position. Only together do they give a picture.

An example from our own work, to make the order of magnitude tangible: on the website of a hotel client there were 594 Google clicks at a click-through rate of 14.6 per cent and an average position of 6.6. That is a high click-through rate for a position that on average is not at the top — and the explanation lies in the search terms: people were searching for the property by name. Whoever knows what they want clicks even at number seven.

For you that means: the click-through rate is a diagnostic instrument, not a target. It shows whether work is needed on your visibility or on your presentation. Promising a particular click-through rate would not be honest, because it depends on position, competition and the make-up of the results page — all things that change without any doing of ours.