CTR

CTR — click-through rate — is the share of people who clicked out of everyone who saw the link, result or ad. If 1,000 people see your search result and 50 click, that’s a 5% CTR.

It’s a sharp signal because it measures whether your offer is compelling at the exact moment of choice. In Google Ads a higher CTR usually lowers your cost per click and improves ad rank. In organic search, CTR is shaped largely by your title and description — which is why those are worth obsessing over.

But CTR alone can mislead. A clickbait title lifts clicks and tanks everything after it: people bounce, conversions fall, and the high CTR papers over a worse outcome. The pair that matters is CTR and what happens next.

I optimize titles and descriptions to earn clicks from the right people, then check that those clicks actually convert. A strong CTR feeding weak results is a problem wearing the costume of a win.