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The CTR formula, and how to use it

The click-through rate formula is straightforward, and this click-through rate calculator applies it in all three directions:

CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) x 100

An impression is one instance of your ad, listing or email being shown. A click is someone acting on it. Dividing one by the other and multiplying by 100 turns it into the percentage everyone reports.

Worked example. A Google Ads campaign served 45,000 impressions last month and earned 1,200 clicks. That is 1,200 divided by 45,000, which is 0.0267, multiplied by 100 for a CTR of 2.67%.

The same formula rearranges when you know the rate and need one of the other two. To find clicks, multiply impressions by the CTR and divide by 100. To work out how to calculate impressions from a known CTR, divide clicks by the CTR and multiply by 100. The calculator above handles all three directions, so you do not have to rearrange anything by hand.

What is a good click through rate?

The honest answer is that there is no single number, and any page giving you one without asking which channel you mean is not helping. A CTR that would be outstanding for display advertising would be a catastrophe for branded search. These are the ranges usually cited, and they are starting points rather than targets:

Google Ads search. Roughly 3% to 5% is typical, with above 6% considered strong. Branded terms run far higher, often above 15%.
Google organic. Position dominates everything else. The top result commonly earns somewhere between 25% and 40%, and it falls away sharply below the top three.
Email marketing. 2% to 5% click-through on delivered emails is a common range, though it varies hugely by list quality and how often you send.
Display advertising. Often around 0.5%, and anything above 1% is doing well.

The comparison that actually matters is against yourself. Your CTR last quarter, on the same channel, for the same kind of keyword, is a far more useful benchmark than an industry average assembled from businesses that may share nothing with yours.

Email CTR, open rate and click-to-open rate

Email has three rates that get used interchangeably and should not be. The email mode above calculates all three at once so the difference is visible:

Open rate. Opens divided by emails delivered. Tells you whether your subject line and sender name earned attention.
Click-through rate. Clicks divided by emails delivered. The headline number, covering the whole journey from inbox to click.
Click-to-open rate. Clicks divided by opens. This one isolates the email content itself, since it only counts people who actually opened it.

Click-to-open is the most useful of the three for judging your copy and offer, because it removes the subject line from the equation. A low click-through rate with a healthy click-to-open rate tells you the email works fine and the subject line is the problem.

One caveat worth knowing: since Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection, open rates are inflated and less trustworthy than they used to be, which drags click-to-open rate down with them. Treat both as directional.

CTR by Google position, and what ranking higher is worth

In organic search, your click-through rate is mostly a function of where you rank. The position mode above takes a keyword's monthly search volume and shows roughly what each position from 1 to 10 would return, which is the quickest way to judge whether chasing a term is worth the effort.

Treat those figures as rounded central estimates rather than forecasts. Published CTR studies disagree with each other substantially, and position 1 alone gets reported anywhere from around 25% to 40% depending on whose data you read and which year. The spread is real, not sloppiness: click-through rate genuinely depends on query intent, how many ads and SERP features sit above the organic results, and increasingly on whether an AI Overview is answering the question before anyone scrolls.

Used comparatively, though, the curve is reliable in shape even where the absolute numbers are uncertain. The drop from position 1 to position 3 is steep in every study ever published, and that is the part worth acting on.

Frequently asked questions

How do you compute CTR?

Divide clicks by impressions, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage. The CTR formula is CTR = (clicks / impressions) x 100. If an ad was shown 45,000 times and got 1,200 clicks, that is (1,200 / 45,000) x 100 = 2.67%. The calculator above does this instantly and can also work backwards if you know the CTR and need the clicks or impressions.

What does CTR stand for?

CTR stands for click-through rate. It is the share of people who clicked something out of everyone who saw it, expressed as a percentage. The term is used in paid ads, organic search, email marketing and display advertising, and although the underlying formula is the same in each, what counts as an impression differs between them.

How is CTR determined?

CTR is determined by the platform counting two things: how many times your result or ad was displayed, and how many times someone clicked it. Google Ads, Google Search Console, Meta and every email platform all report both numbers. The only thing that varies is what each one counts as an impression, which is why the same campaign can show slightly different CTRs in different tools.

What's the difference between clicks and CTR?

Clicks is a raw count, CTR is a rate. Two hundred clicks from 1,000 impressions is a 20% CTR, and two hundred clicks from 100,000 impressions is 0.2%. The click count is identical but the performance is wildly different. Clicks tell you volume, CTR tells you how compelling the result was to the people who actually saw it.

What is a good CTR rate?

It depends entirely on the channel. For Google Ads search, roughly 3% to 5% is average and above 6% is strong. For Google organic results, position matters far more than anything else: the first result typically earns somewhere around 25% to 40% depending on the study. For email, 2% to 5% click-through is a common range. For display ads, anything above 0.5% is doing well. Comparing your CTR to a different channel's benchmark is the most common mistake here.

What is a good CTR ratio?

The same answer as above, since CTR is already a ratio expressed as a percentage. Rather than chasing a universal target, compare against your own history and against the same channel. A campaign moving from 2.1% to 2.8% is a real improvement, and that tells you more than measuring yourself against an industry average built from businesses that may look nothing like yours.

What is a good average CTR?

Across Google Ads search campaigns the frequently cited average sits between 3% and 6%, varying a lot by industry. In organic search the average across all positions is much lower, because most results sit well below the top few. Averages are a rough sanity check at best: a 1% CTR on a broad awareness keyword and a 1% CTR on a branded search mean completely different things.

Is a 7 click-through rate good?

A 7% CTR is strong in most contexts. For Google Ads search it is comfortably above the typical 3% to 5% range. For email it is very good. For display advertising it would be exceptional, since display typically runs closer to 0.5%. In organic search, 7% would be roughly what you would expect somewhere around position 4, so there it says more about your ranking than your title.

How much does a CTR cost?

CTR does not have a cost, because it is a ratio rather than something you buy. The cost metrics that sit alongside it are CPC, which is what you pay per click, and CPM, which is what you pay per thousand impressions. The three are related: for a fixed CPM, a higher CTR lowers your effective cost per click, because you are getting more clicks from the same impressions.

What is MrBeast's average CTR?

No verified public figure exists, since YouTube click-through rate is only visible in a channel's own analytics and is not published. Reported figures for large creators are estimates or secondhand claims. As context, YouTube's own guidance is that most channels sit between 2% and 10% impressions CTR, and thumbnails and titles move that number more than anything else. Treat any specific claim about another channel's CTR as unverified.

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