CTR = clicks ÷ impressions × 100
48 ÷ 1,600 × 100 = 3 percent
What does a low CTR tell you, and what can a high one hide?
A low CTR says the people seeing the ad did not think it was for them. Either the ad is showing on searches it should not, or the words say nothing the searcher cares about. Google Ads Help ("Clickthrough rate (CTR): Definition") puts it simply: the rate shows how often people who see your ad end up clicking it, which is a read on whether the keywords and ads are relevant.
A high CTR feels like success and can be a leak. An ad that says "Free" or "From $1" gets clicks from people who will never buy at your real price, and you pay for each of them. Read CTR with the conversions beside it. A rate that climbs while bookings stay flat means the ad is now promising something the business does not sell.
How did a Wollongong driving school get more clicks from the same searches? (example figures)
A driving school in Wollongong with three instructors runs Google Ads on searches like "driving lessons wollongong" and "driving instructor near me". Over a month the original ad showed 1,600 times. The owner wrote a second ad and let Google show both to the same searches for a month.
| Headline | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Lessons booked | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original ad | Professional driving lessons | 1,600 | 48 | 3 percent | 5 |
| New ad | Automatic lessons, we pick you up | 1,600 | 88 | 5.5 percent | 11 |
At $3.50 a click, the original ad cost $168 for 5 bookings and the new one cost $308 for 11, so a booking fell from about $34 to $28. The second headline answered the two questions the school hears on every phone call: do you teach in an automatic, and do I have to get to you. Nothing about the keywords or the bid changed. The words did.
Why does Search Console show a CTR as well?
Because your free listings in Google have a click-through rate too. In Google Search Console, the Performance report shows Total clicks, Total impressions and Average CTR for every search your pages appeared in. A page that appears often and is rarely clicked usually has a title and description that do not answer the search, and those are words you can rewrite this afternoon.
The driving school's lessons page, in the same month, showed in Google's free results 2,300 times for "driving school wollongong" and was clicked 37 times, a CTR of 1.6 percent. Its title was the business name and nothing else. That is the same problem as the first ad, and the same fix.
Where does CoraVision see your click-through rate?
CoraVision reads impressions and clicks for each Google Ads and Meta campaign every night once they are connected, and those two numbers are all CTR is. Search Console is not one of the accounts CoraVision reads, so Cora looks at that one with you in a session you start, with the page in question open on your screen. When the fix is a new ad, you write it and publish it yourself, and the next week's numbers show whether it worked.
Questions
Is a CTR of 2 percent good?
Google publishes no target, and a search ad, a Meta ad in a feed and a listing on page two of Google all live in different ranges. The useful comparison is your own ad against itself, or two of your ads shown to the same searches in the same weeks.
Does a higher click-through rate lower what I pay per click?
It can. Expected click-through rate is one of the three parts of Quality Score, and Google says higher quality ads can lead to lower costs and better positions. The click price still depends on who else is bidding.
Why is my Meta CTR so much lower than my Google one?
On Google the person typed what they wanted, so an ad that answers it gets clicked. On Facebook and Instagram the person was scrolling for something else. Compare Meta ads with each other, and Google ads with each other.