Clicks divided by impressions, as a percentage. If an ad was shown a thousand times and clicked twenty, the click-through rate is 2%.
Click-through rate measures how compelling something looked in the moment — nothing more. A high rate means the headline and the offer matched what the person was after. It says nothing about whether the page they landed on was any good, or whether they bought anything.
It matters commercially in paid search because Google uses expected click-through rate as part of Quality Score, and a higher Quality Score lowers what you pay per click. In organic search it is the share of searchers who choose your result over the others on the page, which is where the title and meta description earn their keep.
| Google Search ads, brand terms | 15–35% | Low competition on your own name |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search ads, service terms | 3–8% | Healthy for a local trade |
| Google Search ads, broad terms | under 1% | Usually a targeting problem |
| Organic, position 1 | 25–35% | Varies hugely by query type |
| Meta ads, cold audience | 0.8–1.8% | Interruption, not intent |
Ranges are indicative only. Your own trend over time is far more useful than any benchmark.
There is a free calculator on this site for exactly this.
A free consult is twenty minutes and there is no pitch deck at the end of it.