What Is Click-Through Rate & Why CTR Is Important

Search engines place a high premium on a good click-through rate (CTR).

After all, in the pay-per-click model, the more someone clicks, the more money that search engine makes.

But CTR is important to advertisers, too.

When a user turns to a search engine, they have a question and are looking for an answer. They are expressing a need or want.

What makes search so great is users are telling you exactly what they are looking for! They’ve already decided they need something and are now trying to find it.

Creating a relevant paid search ad is your first step as an advertiser in fulfilling that need.

This chapter will explain what click-through rate is, what a good CTR is, how it impacts your ad rank and Quality Score, and when a low CTR is OK.

What Is Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

Put simply, click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.

Put simply, click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.

If your PPC ad had 1,000 impressions and one click, that’s a 0.1% CTR.

As a metric, CTR tells you how relevant searchers are finding your ad to be.

If you have a:

• High CTR, users are finding your ad to be highly relevant.
• Low CTR, users are finding your ad to be less relevant.

• High CTR, users are finding your ad to be highly relevant.
• Low CTR, users are finding your ad to be less relevant.

The ultimate goal of any PPC campaign is to get qualified users to come to your website and perform a desired action (e.g., make a purchase, fill out a lead or contact form, download a spec sheet).

CTR is the first step in the process to improving your ad’s relevancy and generating those desired actions.

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