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

CTR (click-through rate) is clicks divided by impressions for whatever is currently selected, expressed as a percentage. If a query produced 1,000 impressions and 30 clicks, its CTR is 3%.

Where to find it

Open Performance > Search results. CTR and Average position are switched off by default, so click those two metric cards to add them to the chart and to every table underneath. The number then follows whatever filters, date range and dimension you have applied.

It is a ratio, not an average of averages

Search Console computes the CTR of a group as total clicks divided by total impressions across that group. It does not average the CTR of the individual rows. That is why the CTR of a page can look nothing like the mean of the CTRs of the queries that fed it: high-impression, low-click queries dominate the denominator.

What makes a CTR number misleading

• Position. CTR falls sharply as average position drops, so a raw comparison between two pages ranking in different places says very little. Compare against expected CTR for the position instead.
• Branded versus non-branded. Queries containing your brand name usually convert far better and can hide a weak non-branded CTR.
• Search features. AI overviews, ads, image packs and site links change how much of the result page you own for a given impression.
• Anonymised queries. Rare queries are removed from the query table, so a query-level CTR is calculated over a subset of the property total.
• Aggregation. CTR by page and CTR by property are counted differently, because impressions are grouped differently.

Tip: filter to a single page, then group by query. The queries with high impressions and a CTR well below the rest of that page's queries are usually a title or meta description problem rather than a ranking problem.

For what to aim at, see what is a good CTR in Search Console and average position.

How AutoPSEO helps

The CTR Benchmark report builds a CTR curve from your own queries, calculates an expected CTR for every query ranking in the top 20, and sorts by the gap, so you see which titles are underperforming for where they actually rank rather than in the abstract.