Google asks a Google Ad Grants account to keep an average click-through rate of at least 5%, measured across the account and over the month. It is the programme's most-quoted rule and the one most accounts are closest to failing, usually without anybody watching the number that says so.
What it looks like in whole numbers
The grant is up to $10,000 a month, which Google paces as roughly $329 a day. At the default ceiling of $2 a click, a day that spent all of it would be about 165 clicks. To get 165 clicks at 5%, the account needs to be seen about 3,300 times.
Those three numbers are worth holding together, because they say what shape an account has to be. 3,300 impressions a day is not a handful of exact-match keywords on a charity's own name. It is also nothing like the volume a loosely matched list collects — and a list that collects ten times the impressions at the same clicks has a rate of 0.5%, not 5%.
Arithmetic, not a target. Most grant accounts spend far less than $329 a day, and an account spending a tenth of it can sit comfortably above 5% — the ratio is what is measured, not the volume.
Where the rate actually goes
- Searches the ad was never written for, matched loosely and never excluded. This is the big one, and it is visible in the search terms report rather than in the keyword list.
- Ads that answer the keyword and not the search: one ad group holding nine subjects, so eight of the ads are wrong for whoever is reading.
- Everywhere and everyone: a city charity shown nationally, or an English ad shown to people whose browser says they read something else.
- No assets. Sitelinks, callouts and snippets take up more of the results page and give more reasons to click, and an account without them is competing without them.
What all four have in common is that they add impressions rather than remove clicks. That is why negatives are usually the quickest honest lift available: they take impressions out of the bottom of the fraction without touching the top.
Questions people ask
Is one month below the line the end of the account?
One is not what the policy names. Google's account management policy says the requirement is missed when it is missed for two consecutive months, and that temporary deactivation follows — with reinstatement by request once the cause is dealt with. What happens to a particular account is still Google's to say, and anybody offering you a timeline is guessing.
We are at 4.1% with a week to go. What now?
Negatives on the worst search terms, and pause the weakest ad group rather than trying to rescue it. Both reduce impressions immediately, which is the only half of the fraction that moves quickly.
Does the agent watch this?
It reads the account and will say where the rate is going and what it would change. It proposes; a specialist applies. On a grant account that order is the safeguard, not a formality.