Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the number of clicks a link received divided by the number of times it was shown, expressed as a percentage. In search it is measured per query, page or listing; it tells you how often being seen turned into a visit, and nothing about what happened after.
The arithmetic
Two counts and a division. An impression is one appearance of the link in front of a person; a click is one selection of it. Ten thousand impressions and three hundred clicks is a rate of three in a hundred. Position drives it more than wording does, and a listing that appears for many queries it does not fit will show a low rate that the page cannot fix. Rich results, sitelinks and images shift it in both directions, so a change in rate is not on its own a change in the page’s quality.
Where CTR stops measuring
An AI answer breaks the denominator. When an assistant recommends a business by name, the recommendation has happened whether or not anyone clicks, and often there is no link to click at all. Google’s documentation on AI features in Search describes AI Overviews and AI Mode as showing links from a wider set of sources than the classic results page, which spreads a fixed number of clicks across more pages; a visible recommendation can therefore coincide with a falling rate. This is the reason AI visibility is measured from the answers themselves, by recording whether and how a business was named, rather than from clicks that may never occur. The methodology page sets out how that is done.
Frequently asked
Does an AI citation count as a click?
Not unless someone follows it. A citation is a link in the answer, and it becomes a click only when a reader selects it. Most people read the answer and stop, so a source can be cited in many answers and register almost nothing in click data. Measure citations from the answers, and clicks from analytics, as two different things.
Related terms
Sources
How AI features present links: Google’s documentation on AI features in Search. No third-party rates appear on this page; the example figures are arithmetic, not measurements.