What Is CTR? Click-Through Rate in AI Analytics

How Mersel measures whether AI answer engines are driving real human traffic to your website. The formula, examples, and how to interpret your numbers.

Mersel AI Team

October 30, 2025

3 min read

What Is CTR?

Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures how often AI platform activity on your website results in real humans clicking through from AI answer engines. It answers one question: "Is AI actually driving people to my site, or just visiting it?"

Why does this metric matter? Because AI-referred traffic converts differently than search traffic. ChatGPT referrals convert at 15.9% compared to 1.76% for Google organic, according to Ahrefs. Visitors from AI have already done their research inside the conversation. By the time they click through, they're ready to act.

The Formula

CTR formula: Clicks divided by Agent Visits times 100

Where:

Agent Visits are visits from AI platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.) that access your content to answer user questions.
Clicks are real people who clicked a link to your site from an AI answer engine's response.

Not sure about the difference between Clicks and other traffic? See Clicks vs Human Visits for a full breakdown.

How It Works (Example)

A user asks ChatGPT: "What does example.com do?"
ChatGPT visits your site to understand your content. That's +1 Agent Visit.
ChatGPT generates an answer and includes a link to your site.
The user clicks that link and lands on your site. That's +1 Click.
Mersel automatically detects that this visitor came from an AI answer engine.

In this case: CTR = 1 / 1 x 100 = 100% for that interaction.

Two Levels of CTR

Global CTR

Shown in the overview KPI card. Calculated across all AI platforms combined.

Example: 11 total agent visits across all platforms, 1 click = 9.1% CTR.

Per-Platform CTR

Shown in the Answer Engine Performance table and Agent Decision Flow cards. Calculated for each AI platform individually.

ChatGPT CTR formula: ChatGPT Clicks divided by ChatGPT Agent Visits

Example: 4 ChatGPT agent visits, 1 click from ChatGPT = 25% CTR.

Per-platform CTR is often higher than global CTR because some platforms may have agent visits but zero clicks, which dilutes the global number.

Interpreting CTR Values

CTR Range	What It Means
20% and above	AI platforms are actively citing your content and users are clicking through. Your content is highly valuable to AI-driven audiences.
5% to 20%	AI uses your content to generate answers, but most users get what they need without clicking. This is normal for informational content.
Below 5%	AI platforms are mostly visiting and indexing your site without driving human traffic. This often indicates training activity rather than active question-answering.

Important Notes

CTR is an aggregate ratio, not 1:1 attribution. Mersel can't match a specific agent visit to a specific click. An AI platform might visit your page in the morning, and a person might click through later that day from a cached AI answer. The CTR is calculated over the selected time period as a whole. This is the industry-standard approach used by all AI analytics tools.

Clicks are a conservative estimate. Some users have browser settings that prevent Mersel from identifying where they came from. The actual number of AI-driven clicks is likely slightly higher than what's reported.

For a broader look at how AI search is changing traffic patterns, read Your Ecommerce Store Is Invisible to AI Search, which covers AI conversion rates across platforms.