Click-through rateCTR

Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions. In search it measures how often people who see your listing actually click it, and it is reported per query and per page in Search Console. CTR is shaped by position (higher positions earn far more clicks), by the title and meta that form the listing, and by the SERP context, an AI Overview or a competitor with review stars changes how many clicks the organic listings get.

CTR became strategically important after the May 2024 Google API leak and the DOJ antitrust exhibits revealed details of NavBoost, a system that uses click data, including click-through, dwell, and last-long-click, as a ranking input. This confirmed what practitioners long suspected: Google measures the post-click loop, not just on-page signals. A listing that earns clicks and satisfies them is rewarded; one that earns clicks and gets pogo-sticked back to the results is not.

The practical use of CTR is twofold. As a metric, low CTR at a decent position points to a weak title or meta, fixable on-page. As a strategy, the lesson of NavBoost is that you cannot game ranking purely through content tricks; you have to earn the click and satisfy it. We surface CTR by query when Search Console is connected and flag positions where CTR is below the expected curve.