Search engines
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Also called: CTR
Click-through rate is the share of people who click a listing after seeing it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions. In Google Search Console it is reported per page and per query. A page with many impressions and a low click-through rate is being shown and passed over, which usually points at the title and description rather than at the page's content.
Reading it requires holding position alongside it, since rate falls steeply with position. A two percent rate at position three signals a problem; the same rate at position fifteen is unremarkable.
The usual cause of a low rate at a good position is a title that does not use the words the searcher typed. Search Console shows the actual queries, and rewriting the title to match that wording is often enough to move it.
AI Overviews complicate the picture, because a search where an assistant answers the question outright can lose clicks at an unchanged position. Comparing a page against its own history matters more than against a general benchmark.
Why it matters
Impressions without clicks means the ranking work already succeeded and the listing itself is losing the visit.
Related terms
Last reviewed 2026-09-04. All Saige glossary terms.