CTR

Was ist die CTR?

CTR stands for click-through rate and is a key figure that describes how often an ad was clicked on average. The CTR can be applied in different areas. These can be among other things:

How is the CTR calculated?

You calculate the click-through rate by dividing the number of clicks on an impression by the total number of views of this ad.

Here you can find the formula for calculating the click-through rate (CTR). This results from the number of clicks (marked blue in the image) divided by the number of impressions (marked red in the image).
Formula for calculating the CTR

If you now take the formula *100, you get the CTR in percentage.

Example: An ad that is displayed 1,000 times and clicked on 35 times has a click rate of 0.035 or 3.5%.

What is a good CTR?

It is not possible to make a general statement about which click rate is good or bad. Click rates vary in different areas and must also be evaluated in a differentiated manner within a discipline. For example, the expected CTR of an advertising banner is completely different from that of a number 1 result of a SERP. The number 1 result will in turn differ significantly from a number 8 result in terms of click-through rate. Often the CTR alone is not even meaningful enough to be able to give an evaluation at all, because depending on the goal you need other metrics such as the conversion rate.

CTR in SEO

When you talk about the click-through-rate in search engine optimization, you refer to the organic search result of a SERP as an impression. The CTR of your website for certain search queries in Google, you can see in the performance report of the Google Search Console.

Here you can see an example from the Google Search Console. You can view key figures for various search queries. The CTR is highlighted in blue here.
The CTR among other metrics in Google Search Console; Source: Google Search Console.

How can the CTR be influenced in SEO?

The CTR is strongly dependent on how high the result is placed on the particular SERP. As a rule, the lower a result is placed, the lower the click-through rate. It should be noted that a result is only counted as an impression if it is also displayed. Since a result that is ranked 11th is displayed less often than one that is ranked 10th, it can still have a better click-through rate.

However, the CTR does not only depend on the placement on the SERP. You can also increase the click-through rate with an appealing snippet, or you can leave potential with a weak snippet. If the CTR of your page is too low, this can either be due to the fact that the snippets of other results are more inviting, or the page is not considered relevant for the search query by the users.

Here you can see the snippet of an eology News article about cookieless tracking as it is displayed on Google's SERP. It consists of URL, title and description.
Snippet of a Google SERP; source: Google

If you want to learn more about snippets and how to create them, read our detailed post on snippet optimization!

Does the CTR have an influence on the Google ranking?

Although Google has denied that the CTR is an evaluation criterion for the ranking of the search engine, there are indications that the click-through rate has at least some influence on the placement of a search result. It is certain that Google measures the behavior of its users and uses this data to evaluate websites. However, the CTR is only one of many metrics. Since the click-through rate basically says nothing about the quality of a website’s content, but rather evaluates the snippet, there are other metrics which may be more suitable for measuring relevance such as bounce rate and dwell time.

CTR in Google Ads

The click-through rate in Google Ads shows the ratio of clicks on ads to impressions of those ads. It is an indicator to measure the success of ad campaigns. You can view the click-through rate for specific campaigns and keywords in Google Ads. To do this, click on the header of the column in which you want to display the click rate in the overview and select CTR. Alternative: You select an area via the page navigation. Google then lists many key figures for this area.

The campaigns are displayed in the Google Ads overview. There are three columns for the campaigns with the key figures costs, clicks and CTR. The CTR is highlighted in red.
The CTR for different campaigns in the Google Ads overview; Source: Google Ads

What is the significance of the CTR for Google Ads campaigns?

Google Ads uses CPC as a payment model, which means that every click on your ad costs you money. Therefore, you should not only pay attention to the click-through rate alone. It can happen that your ad is clicked often, but no conversions are generated. However, if conversions are the goal of the campaign, then you pay for the high click-through rate without achieving your goal.

A higher click-through rate also influences the price in another way. The costs per click are determined by the quality factor, among other things. A high click-through rate plays a favorable role in determining the quality factor. Thus, Google rewards a high click-through rate with a lower click price.

What is a good CTR in Google Ads?

Dies hängt stark von dem Keyword und dem Anzeigeformat ab, für welches die Anzeige geschaltet wird. Bei Textanzeigen für generische Keywords können Klickraten von 3-5% schon gut sein. Bei Brand-Keywords sind Klickraten von 30% und mehr erstrebenswert, da Du die Motivation des Nutzers normalerweise leicht befriedigen kannst.

FAQs

What does CTR stand for?

CTR is the abbreviation for Click-Through-Rate.

What is the CTR?

The CTR is a metric that represents the ratio of clicks to impressions, i.e. all actual viewing contacts of an ad.

How is the CTR calculated?

The CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on an ad by the total number of impressions of the ad.

How high is the CTR?

This cannot be answered in a general way. It ranges from 0.1% in the area of banner advertising to over 60% for top search results on Google.

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