What is CTR in Google Search Console and how is it calculated?

CTR (click-through rate) is clicks divided by impressions, shown as a percentage: 40 clicks from 2,000 impressions is a 2% CTR. Search Console works it out from the totals of whatever you are looking at, whether one query, one page, a country or the whole site. It never averages the CTRs of the rows underneath, which is why the same page can show quite different CTRs depending on how you slice the report.

Where to find it

In Performance > Search results, select the Average CTR box above the chart. The chart then plots your site's CTR per day, and every table row gets its own CTR column. Filters, date range and search type all apply.

Why it is a ratio of totals, not an average

Take a page that appears for two queries:

Averaging the two rows would give 3%. Search Console reports 1.4%, because query B supplies nine-tenths of the impressions. A handful of high-impression, low-click queries can pull a page's CTR down even when it does well for the searches that matter.

Why one page shows several CTRs

• Grouping. In the chart and the queries table, several of your links on one results page count as a single impression for the site. In the pages table each URL counts separately. Google notes that CTR is generally higher when grouped by property.
• Rare queries. Queries searched by very few people are left out of query rows but stay in the totals, so a page's CTR in the pages table includes searches you cannot see in its query list.
• Query filters. Adding a query filter, such as "queries containing", removes those rare queries from the totals as well.

What moves CTR besides your title

• Position, by far the biggest factor. Compare a page's CTR with pages at a similar position, not with your site average.
• The results page itself. An AI Overview, ads, a featured snippet or a video block above you all take attention for the same impression.
• Brand. Searches for your name convert far better. Search Console's branded queries filter, available since March 2025 for sites with enough impressions, separates the two.
• Device and search type. Mobile and desktop, web and image results behave differently; compare within one.

How to find CTR problems worth fixing

1. Filter to non-branded queries, web search, the last three months.
2. Group by page and sort by impressions.
3. For each page with plenty of impressions, open its queries. A low CTR at positions 1 to 5 is usually a snippet problem: rewrite the title and meta description around the main query. At positions 8 to 20 it is mostly a ranking problem, so work on the content first.
4. After a change, compare 28 days before and after, matching weekdays.

For targets by position, see what is a good CTR; for a structured fix, the CTR recovery playbook.

How AutoPSEO helps

The CTR Benchmark builds an expected CTR for positions 1 to 20 from your own queries, falling back to a published benchmark where your data is thin, then ranks every query or page by how far it falls short and how many clicks closing the gap would bring. For articles AutoPSEO's content engine manages, the weekly maintenance does this on its own: a page shown at positions 8 to 20 with 30 or more impressions, clicked less than 60% as often as its position usually is, gets its title, meta description and opening answer reworked. See content engine maintenance.

Sources: Google's impressions, position and clicks help, Performance report help and Performance report dimensions help.