Google is constantly, for years and years, saying it does not use click through rate (CTR) for search ranking purposes. John Mueller of Google was asked this again and he said "if CTR were what drove search rankings, the results would be all click-bait." He said he does not see Google using CTR as a ranking signal, he said "I don't see that happening."
John said on Twitter the other day "If CTR were what drove search rankings, the results would be all click-bait. I don't see that happening."
Here are those tweets:
If CTR were what drove search rankings, the results would be all click-bait. I don't see that happening.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) November 4, 2021
Yes, Google wants the title links in the search results to be representative of what the content is about but it does not want the titles to be used in a way where people would drive clicks above and beyond so that it influences rankings.
Forum discussion at Twitter.