What is CTR (Click-Through Rate)?
CTR is the percentage of people who clicked your ad after seeing it: clicks divided by impressions. It measures how relevant and compelling your ad is to the searches it shows for, and it is a direct input into Quality Score through the 'expected CTR' component.
What to know in practice
- A 'good' CTR is relative: branded search terms can exceed 15%, while broad non-brand Display can sit below 1%. Compare against your own account and intent type, not a universal benchmark.
- Higher CTR raises Quality Score, which lowers CPC, so relevance compounds: a better ad literally costs less to run.
- CTR can be deceptively high on irrelevant traffic. Pair it with conversion rate; a high CTR with a low conversion rate often signals a mismatch between ad promise and landing page.
- Ad assets (sitelinks, callouts, images) increase the ad's footprint and typically lift CTR.
Common misconception
A high CTR is not automatically good. Clicks you pay for that never convert are expensive; CTR matters only alongside what happens after the click.
Related terms
- Quality Score → Paid Media
- Ad Rank → Paid Media
- Conversion Rate → Analytics