How to calculate CTR
Divide clicks by impressions and multiply by 100. Google Ads and Search Console both define it that way. In Search Console, an impression is counted each time your site appears in a Google result and a click each time someone clicks through to your site, so 40 clicks from 2,000 impressions is a CTR of 2%.
What counts as a good CTR?
There is no single number. Google's Ads help says a good CTR is relative to what you advertise and where. In organic results, position decides most of it: in Backlinko's study of Search Console data for about 1.3 million pages, the first result averaged a CTR of 27.6%, about 10 times the tenth result.
So compare a page with pages at a similar position on your own site, not with an industry average. A page in position three with half the CTR of your other position-three pages is the one to look at.
Why a page's CTR drops, and what to change
Search Console's Performance report shows clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for each search and each page. When a rate falls, the cause is usually one of these:
- The page slipped down the results, so check its average position first.
- The title doesn't say what the searcher wants. Google often shows the title tag as the headline.
- Google replaced a vague or repeated title with its own.
- An AI Overview, ads or a map now sit above the result for that search.
- The search is broad, and most people who typed it wanted something else.