How often people who see your ad or link click it, and what a given rate means in clicks and impressions.
Click-through rate (CTR)
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Enter the two figures asked for to see the result.
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Enter how many times your ad or link was shown (impressions) and how many times it was clicked over the same period. You get the click-through rate (CTR) to two decimal places, with the working. The calculator also works the other way: from a CTR, the clicks a number of impressions should bring, or the impressions you would need for a number of clicks. To measure a change, add the figures of another ad or period.
Read both figures from the same report, for the same ads, keywords or pages and the same dates. Google Ads divides the clicks an ad receives by the number of times it was shown; Search Console divides the clicks on links to your site in Google’s results by their impressions.
Click-through rate: clicks ÷ impressions × 100. Expected clicks: impressions × CTR ÷ 100, for example to forecast what 50,000 impressions would bring at the rate you usually get. Impressions needed: clicks × 100 ÷ CTR, the number of times your ad would have to be shown to get the clicks you are after.
In the comparison panel, enter the impressions and clicks of the other ad or period. You get its CTR, the difference in percentage points and the relative change, which say different things: from 2% to 2.5%, the CTR gains 0.5 percentage points, a rise of 25%.
A CTR worked out from your figures is rounded to the nearest hundredth of a percentage point, with halves rounded up; a CTR you type is used to three decimal places. Expected clicks are rounded to the nearest whole click, and impressions needed are rounded up to a whole impression, so that the rate gives at least the clicks you asked for. The difference and the relative change (to one decimal place) start from the rates shown.
CTR = clicks ÷ impressions × 100.
Expected clicks = impressions × CTR ÷ 100, rounded to the nearest whole click.
Impressions needed = clicks × 100 ÷ CTR, rounded up to a whole impression.
Impressions per click = impressions ÷ clicks.
Difference (percentage points) = CTR − other CTR; relative change = difference ÷ other CTR × 100.
Ad A was shown 24,000 times and clicked 444 times. Its CTR is 444 ÷ 24,000 × 100 = 1.85%, one click for every 54.1 impressions. Over the same weeks, ad B had 270 clicks from 18,000 impressions, a CTR of 1.5%. Ad A’s CTR is 0.35 percentage points higher, a relative difference of 23.3%. If ad A keeps its rate, another 40,000 impressions should bring 40,000 × 1.85 ÷ 100 = 740 clicks, and 1,000 clicks would take 1,000 × 100 ÷ 1.85 ≈ 54,054.05, so 54,055 impressions.
Divide the clicks by the impressions and multiply by 100. Google’s own example: 5 clicks from 100 impressions give a CTR of 5 ÷ 100 × 100 = 5%. With 444 clicks from 24,000 impressions, the CTR is 1.85%, or one click for every 54.1 impressions.
Because it is total clicks divided by total impressions, so a page with many impressions counts for more than one with few. Take a page with 10 clicks from 100 impressions (10%) and another with 100 clicks from 10,000 impressions (1%): the mean of their two rates is 5.5%, but together they have 110 clicks from 10,100 impressions, a CTR of 1.09%. Search Console also counts impressions in two ways: in the chart, and in the table by query, two results from your site for the same search count as one impression; in the table by page, each page counts its own. So the totals can differ from one view to another.
Both, as long as each is named for what it is. The rate gained 0.5 percentage points (2.5 − 2). Measured against its starting point, it rose by 25% (0.5 ÷ 2 × 100). A rise ‘of 0.5%’ would take a CTR of 2% to only 2.01%, so use ‘percentage points’ for the gap between two rates.
YouTube Studio reports a thumbnail impressions click-through rate: how often viewers watched a video after seeing its thumbnail. An impression counts only when the thumbnail is shown for more than one second with at least half of it on screen. To work it out here, enter the views from thumbnail impressions as clicks and the thumbnail impressions as impressions.
No official body publishes a benchmark. Google’s own help says that a good CTR depends on what you are advertising and on which networks, and the averages quoted online mix very different sectors, formats and positions. The most reliable yardstick is your own history: compare one ad with another, or one period with the one before, using figures from the same report.
This calculator gives general information, not legal, tax, financial or accounting advice. The result depends on the impressions and clicks you count: check that they come from the same report, the same period and the same ads or pages.
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