Google’s Click Share Metric Now Available for Search Campaigns

Google's Click Share metric, which has been available for shopping campaigns since 2015, will now be available for search campaigns. The metric helps advertisers understand how close they are to receiving every possible click within auctions they appear in, and identify opportunities to increase click volume.

Within search campaigns, Click Share data is now available at the campaign, ad group, and keyword levels. It continues to be offered within shopping campaigns at the campaign, ad group, product category, and shopping attribute levels.

What Is Click Share?
The metric estimates the share of clicks your ad received for the searches it appeared in. Essentially, it provides a good answer to the question, “When bidding competitively and showing in an auction, what percentage of the resulting clicks does an ad capture?"

Similar to Impression Share, Google calculates Click Share by analyzing auctions throughout the day and considering the ad’s clicks relative to “achievable clicks” (clicks within auctions where your ad showed). For example, an ad Click Share would be 30% if the ad was clicked 30 times, but Google estimates it could have been clicked 100 times based on auctions where it appeared. Note that Click Share will not factor in clicks from auctions where your ad did not show or where no paid search clicks occurred.

Differentiating Click Share, Impression Share, and Click Through Rate
While Click Share and Impression Share are calculated similarly, the two metrics are distinct and serve separate purposes:

• Impression Share denotes an ad’s share of eligible impressions. It shows how often an ad appears in searches relative to all possible auctions and is largely influenced by budgets and bids.
• Click Share denotes an ad’s share of achievable clicks based on total clicks within a pool of eligible impressions. It shows how your ad is engaging users compared to the competitions. While budgets and bids are factors, qualitative influences such as ad relevance and extensions also carry significant weight. 

The two metrics work well together. Because you need an impression to get a click, Click Share can increase with Impression Share. That said, a high Impression Share can have a relatively lower Click Share, which could indicate high budgets and bids, but lower user engagement due to ad quality. Increasing the relevance of your ads and adding extensions can improve click volume. Additionally, having multiple ads from one advertiser show at the same time has the potential to increase overall Click Share for shopping campaigns.

While Click Through Rate (CTR) calculates the percent of impressions that resulted in clicks, it only takes into account your specific data and not the entire pool of eligible impressions and clicks. Additionally, impressions that don’t generate any paid clicks contribute to CTR but not to Click Share. Actions taken to improve CTR and Click Share will likely be similar, as each involves ad copy relevance and searcher engagement. However, Click Share is a competitive metric, giving you an estimate of click growth opportunity based on ad relevance and engagement relative to competitors in the market.

How to Best Interpret and Use Click Share
Because Click Share helps advertisers recognize where they can most effectively increase click volume relative to competitors within their space, lower Click Share provides more opportunity to capture additional clicks. If the Click Share for an ad is 30% and Google estimates it could have received 100 total clicks, there are an additional 70 potential clicks to capture. Advertisers may gain these clicks by optimizing budgets and bids to increase impressions and improve ad position. They may also improve ad copy relevance and ad extensions to boost qualitative measures and user engagement.

Finding significant gaps in Impression Share and Click Share is useful for identifying areas where budgets and bids may be appropriately high, but ad relevance and extensions can be improved. One final thing to keep in mind is that eligible clicks can change over time. Because of this, while your ad clicks may increase, the pool of clicks that Google deems eligible may grow faster, resulting in decreased Click Share despite click volume growth.

To learn more about Rise’s award-winning search approach, contact us today.