Also called CTR
Click-through rate is the share of people who saw something and clicked it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
CTR measures appeal, not outcome. It tells you whether a thing was compelling enough to press, and stops there — a link that everyone clicks and nobody acts on has an excellent CTR and no value.
Its usefulness comes from comparison. A CTR is close to meaningless as an absolute number, because the denominators differ wildly between contexts: an email list that opted in behaves nothing like a cold ad audience, and search results behave nothing like a social feed. Comparing your own CTR against your own previous CTR, on the same surface, is where the signal lives.
The denominator is also the most common source of confusion. "Impressions" can mean served, viewable, or unique — three different numbers producing three different rates from the same clicks.
In practice
A bio link with 12,000 profile views and 480 page visits has a 4% CTR. Whether that is good depends entirely on what the previous month's was.
Common mistake
Comparing CTR across platforms and concluding one is better. The measurement definitions differ enough that the comparison has no meaning.
Read more on this
- How to Create Digital Products to Sell in 2026 Learn how to create digital products to sell in 2026 with this hands-on guide covering product selection, packaging, pricing, delivery, and promotion
- Best Platform to Sell Digital Products in 2026 Find the best platform to sell digital products in 2026. Compare fees, checkout, bookings, email capture, and analytics to choose the right fit for creators.
- How to Monetize Social Media and Turn Followers Into Revenue Learn how to monetize social media with proven revenue streams, a high-converting link-in-bio store, email funnels and pricing tactics that turn followers into
