We need to talk about bounce rate.
Now, before I begin ranting, I'd just like to put on the record that bounce rate can, in certain cases, be a useful metric that can, when viewed in the context of other metrics, give you insights on the performance of the content on your website. I accept that. However, it is also a metric which is often misinterpreted and is, in a lot of cases, misleading.
We've gone on the record with our thoughts on bounce rate as a metric, but it's still something that crops up on a regular basis.
The problem with bounce rate
Put simply, bounce rate doesn't do what a lot of people think it does: It does not tell you whether people are reading and engaging with your content in any meaningful way.
Let's make sure we're all singing the same song on what exactly bounce rate means.
According to Google, "Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page)."
In simple terms, a bounce is recorded when someone lands on your website and then leaves the site without visiting another page or carrying out a tracked action (event) on the page.
The reality is that while bounce rate can give you a useful overview of user behaviour, there are too many unknowns that come with it as a metric to make it a bottom-line KPI for your advertising campaigns, your content marketing campaigns, or any of your marketing campaigns, for that matter.
When looked at in isolation, bounce rate gives you very little valuable information. There is a tendency to panic when bounce rate begins to climb or if it is deemed to be "too high." This highly subjective term is often used without consideration of what constitutes an average bounce rate (average bounce rate for a landing page is generally 70-90%).
There's a school of thought that a high bounce rate can be seen as a good thing, as it means that the user found no need to go looking any further for the information they needed. While there is some merit to this view, and in certain circumstances it can be the case, it seems to me to be overly simplistic and opaque.
It's also very important to bear in mind that if a user bounces, they are not included in site metrics such as average session duration.
There is, however, a simple way to turn bounce rate into a robust and useful metric. I'm a big fan of adjusted bounce rate, which gives a much better metric on how users are engaging with your website.
The solution: adjusted bounce rate
Essentially, you set up an event which is triggered after a user spends a certain amount of time on the landing page, telling Google Analytics not to count these users as bounces. A user may come to your website, find all of the information they need (a phone number, for example) and then leave the site without visiting another page. Without adjusted bounce rate, such a user would be considered a bounce, even though they had a successful experience.
One example we see frequently of when bounce rate can be a very misleading metric is when viewing the performance of your blog posts. A user could land on a blog post and read the whole thing, but if they then leave the site they'll be counted as a bounce. Again, this gives no insight whatsoever into how engaged this user was or if they had a good experience on your website.
By defining a time limit after which you can consider a user to be 'engaged,' that user would no longer count as a bounce, and you'd get a more accurate idea of whether they found what they were looking for.
When we implemented Adjusted Bounce Rate on our own website, we were able to see that a lot of our blog posts which had previously had high bounce rates, had actually been really engaging to those who read them.
For example, the bounce rate for a study we published on Facebook ad CTRs dropped by 87.32% (from 90.82% to 11.51%), while our Irish E-commerce Study dropped by 76.34% (from 82.59% to 19.54%).
When we look at Moz's own Google Analytics for Whiteboard Friday, we can see that they often see bounce rates of over 80%. While I don't know for sure (such is the uncertainty surrounding bounce rate as a metric), I'd be willing to bet that far more than 20% of visitors to the Whiteboard Friday pages are interested and engaged with what Rand has to say.
This is an excellent example of where adjusted bounce rate could be implemented to give a more accurate representation of how users are responding to your content.
The brilliant thing about digital marketing has always been the ability of marketers to make decisions based on data and to use what we learn to inform our strategy. Adjusted bounce rate gives us much more valuable data than your run-of-the-mill, classic bounce rate.
It gives us a much truer picture of on-site user behaviour.
Adjusted bounce rate is simple to implement, even if you're not familiar with code, requiring just a small one-line alteration to the Google Analytics code on your website. The below snippet of code is just the standard Google Analytics tag (be sure to add your own tracking ID in place of the "UA-XXXXXXX-1"), with one extra line added (the line beginning with "setTimeout", and marked with an "additional line" comment in the code). This extra line is all that needs to be added to your current tag to set up adjusted bounce rate.
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
setTimeout("_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', '15_seconds', 'read'])",15000); // --additional line
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'https://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
It's a really simple job for your developer; simply replace the old snippet with the one above (that way you won't need to worry about your tracking going offline due to a code mishap).
In the code above, the time is set to 15 seconds, but this can be changed (both the '15_seconds' and the 15000) depending on when you consider the user to be "engaged". This ‘15_seconds’ names your event, while the final part inside the parenthesis sets the time interval and must be input in milliseconds (e.g. 30 seconds would be 30000, 60 seconds would be 60000, etc.).
On our own website, we have it set to 30 seconds, which we feel is enough time for a user to decide whether or not they're in the right place and if they want to leave the site (bounce).
Switching over to adjusted bounce rate will mean you'll see fewer bouncers within Google Analytics, as well as improving the accuracy of other metrics, such as average session duration, but it won't affect the tracking in any other way.
Adjusted bounce rate isn't perfect, but its improved data and ease of implementation are a massive step in the right direction, and I firmly believe that every website should be using it. It helps answer the question we've always wanted bounce rate to answer: "Are people actually reading my content?"
I firmly believe that every website should be using adjusted bounce rate. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
I actually don't think that this is such a good idea.
Users can and do open multiple links as background tabs - but your code (the setTimeout function in particular) can not actually detect whether or not the page/tab is visible to the user or not. The event is fired after 15 seconds in any case, leading to inaccurate bounce rates. Even if the tab was visible, it can not be implied that the user is actively consuming the contents.
Bounce rates depend on user interaction for a reason. In my opinion, it makes more sense to fire events whenever an actual user interaction happens, but not merely based on time passed after the page has finished loading.
If you don't want to rely on actual clicks, at least tie it to a minimum vertical scroll (if applicable).
Hi Rouven,
The points you raise are certainly valid and I agree that it's not a perfect solution. What adjusted bounce rate is is a really simple solution that allows you to get a better idea of if people are reading your content.
To get a full picture of exactly how people are engaging with your website, you'll need more than one additional line of code but I feel that adjusted bounce rate is definitely an improvement on the classic bounce rate metric.
While we don't know for sure that someone who has been on the page for your set amount of time is actively reading your content, I think it's a more accurate indicator than classic bounce rate.
You really have to weigh up the pros and cons before implementing any change like this.
Thanks,
Rob
While I agree with you on the often misconceived information taken from regular bounce rates, I have to agree with Rouven. Time on page/site can be easily checked from the next column in your analytics and webmasters/marketers can decide whether that is a good, engaged visit, regardless of what the bounce rate says (use of our better judgement). Scroll and click events would be better served to give the data necessary regarding the bounce rates, for the reasons Rouven noted. I'm also interested why the example includes outdated, classic analytics and not the current (for the last 12+ months) Universal?
Agreed - scroll depth/rate is a better indicator of whether visitors are reading your content EXCEPT when there's an active comment thread. If there's a healthy debate happening around your post, you'll start seeing a lot of visitors skimming past the content to reply to other commenters. Previously, my team and I tracked the % of visitors who "skim" read a post versus scroll through it at a reasonable enough rate to allow for actual comprehension.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the point is to eliminate counting anything as a website visit if it's under 15 seconds. This might eliminate some link clicking spam, or people that click on a link by accident, or people that decide to back out because the bus just arrived, or the like.
My question is: How do I set this up if I am using Google Tag manager to manage my GA and Universal Analytics code snippets?
You can alter the sample code to include usage of the Page Visibility API. This will effectively allow you to cancel the setTimeout if the window/page loses focus (i.e. the user tabs to another page).
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1060008/is-there-a-way-to-detect-if-a-browser-window-is-not-currently-active
Hey Rob—
Finding more effective ways of measuring user engagement for your site is definitely worthwhile. I prefer to do this by adding information to GA rather than manipulating the way default metrics are tracked. 3 reasons:
My guidance for marketing managers would be to track Bounce Rate (as defined by GA), but perhaps also add "% of pageviews with time on page > 30s". Something like this could be naively calculated by tracking an event when someone is on a page for > 30s and dividing the number of events by the number of pageviews. This reduces the likelihood of miscommunication. It also allows the team to decide which metric(s) to pay attention to.
Cheers,
Ben
Hey Ben,
There's definitely other ways to do it and adjusted bounce rate isn't a panacea, but I feel it's an excellent first step. You raise some really good points. I think communication is really important when you're making a change like this to make sure that all parties are aware of why it's being made and how it will impact website metrics. I'd definitely recommend using annotations in Google Analytics to signpost when the change was made.
Personally, I think the insights you get from adjusted bounce rate are much better than default bounce rate, so I can't see myself wanting to look at default bounce rate instead, but you're right, in this case I wouldn't be able to see it. This is one of the reasons it's so important to consider the pros and cons of any change.
I wouldn't recommend using adjusted bounce rate on some pages and not others. Not only would this make implementation more complicated, but as you say, it would also make the bounce rate metric inconsistent across different parts of the website. If you decide it will add value to your reporting, I don't see any reason not to implement it on every page.
Thanks for the feedback, some really interesting points.
Rob
I have similar script in mine site:
<script>
function updateGA60(){ _gaq.push(['_trackEvent','timer',' 60s passed']); }
function updateGA30(){ _gaq.push(['_trackEvent','timer',' 30s passed']); }
window.setTimeout(updateGA30, 30000);
window.setTimeout(updateGA60, 60000);
</script>
Works very well and slash bounce with more than 50% after implementation. From 75% now is 36%. Just put this code before of </html>.
But this isn't holy grail for fixing bounce rate. You can implement events in page as - playing video, showing gallery, clicking download button, filling quote form, subscribing to mailing list. You also can implement some events as "goals" in GA to track them too.
Second fighter against bounce can be excellent Rob Flahery GA plugins - Riveted here and Scroll Depth there. Both firing events to GA - one on 5 secs, other at the 0%, 25%, 50% and 100% scrolling points. BUT beware! They fired events as non interaction. This keeps the events from impacting the bounce rate and visit duration. Of course you can change them to interactive, but this will lower bounce to 0%.
And 3rd fighter can be tools as CrazyEgg or other heatmap generators. Using them you can see scrolling and clicking points inside article. It's crucial for you to detect why visitors isn't click on other links and what they're actually do in page.
Whatever you do always remember that even great sites as Moz have pages with 80% bounce. Some of their pages are visit from 14.5k persons this can be around 60 comments and 50 upvotes. (actual numbers are average and can be seen here and there).This is clear sign that "great content" can't help you against bounce rate. If almost 500 persons do some action in pages, what rest of 14k visitors do?
Hi Peter,
You're absolutely right that this isn't the holy grail for bounce rate and there's definitely more you can do to improve visibility on engagement metrics.
Adjusted bounce rate is a good first step though and is really simple to implement. It helps to bridge that gap you mention of trying to figure out if the large number of users who don't carry out an action are reading your content or if they're actual bouncers.
Thanks,
Rob
Hey Peter,
Thanks for mentioning Riveted and Scroll Depth :) If you wanted to use Riveted just to measure a more accurate non-bounce event, you could do something as simple as this:
riveted.init({
eventHandler: function(data) {
if (data == 10) {
ga('send', 'event', 'Non-Bounce', 'True');
}
}
});
Code link
Note that this would turn off the default Riveted features and only track the non-bounce event.
Yeah - it's good, but will screw bounce to almost 0%. And this will be completely inaccurate.
For better results you should implement events for specific actions - opening product gallery, playing video, etc. Also you should link events with specific goals.
With mine code - i can see anyone who exit before 30 secs; anyone who is staying in pages between 30 and 60 secs and anyone who is staying for over 60 seconds.
"And this will be completely inaccurate." Bounce rates are only accurate to their definition. "Bounce" is meaningless on its own :) If you decide a bounce is less than 10 seconds of activity, then this will be about as accurate as you can get.
I'm not saying I recommend that as a bounce definition. I actually don't think bounce rate is worth spending much time on. There are better metrics.
Agreed!
Nice work Rob - Riveted and Scroll Depth inspired me and my team with our work on our blog analytics tool Filament! =) Have you seen/heard anything about Upworthy's work with Attention Minutes? Or is that what inspired you in the first place?
[link removed by editor]
Hello, Rob
While measuring it can be defined as Good ,Bad sometimes ugly bounce rates. Your write up clears the things. I just implement the script into one of the blogs with your provided alteration (I think no one ever thought about it in the past) .
I think Google knows what is quality content while measuring the results through the bounce rates Wikipedia is the best example for this. Everyone knows for most of the keywords, especially for informative keywords. Wikipedia tops the search results. We all can assume the bounce rate of Wikipedia :)
Hi Vishal,
I think you're absolutely right and Wikipedia is a great example of this.
Thanks,
Rob
Just amended the code and implemented the new line in the analytic code. Let see how it goes :)
Hope it's worked well for you!
Rob
Hey Rob,
Thanks for the sharing such a useful article. It'll solve the query of numbers of people. Infect I was facing the same problem, but after the readjusting bounce rate , I got success to decrease more than 75% bounce rate.
It is quite typical in the case of blog, news and publishing websites for the visitors come and leave from the landing web page without browsing anything else. These site visitors typically come to the website to read most recent news/article as we're coming over here on MOZ and after that leave the site from the landing page as there is no should surf anything else.
And if the brows are single web page sees, Google Analytics will reveal 100 % bounce rate. When a visitor converts on your website after that, his visit must not be counted as bounce also if that browse through is a single page visit. This is for our main reason of running a website is to obtain conversions and not to optimize bounce rates. That is why you should readjust your bounce rate. When the change has been made, you will certainly see an extreme decrease in your websites bounce rate.
Anyways, Congratulation for your 1st post on MOZ .I am overjoyed with your success. Shine on!
Thanks a million. Glad you liked it!
Rob
Bounce rate is one of the most misunderstood metrics in Google Analytics.
Couldn't agree more.
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Rob, keep up, awesome post with another alternative to a common problem. That's what's needed...Cheers form the land.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Rob
I would always recommend starting a new view for GA within the site prior to making adjustments such as this (or any filters). That way you can always compare the data to an unfiltered view. There is also a great way to implement this within Google Tag Manager, which is where I would recommend, much easier to keep organized and make adjustments if needed.
Hi Blake,
That's a great idea and it takes any worries people might have about implementing this out of the picture.
Thanks,
Rob
Cool! It's really actionable.
Glad you liked it!
Rob
Great insight thank you.
Thank you for reading!
Rob
"When looked at in isolation, bounce rate gives you very little valuable information."
Agreed - and I've found this to be true for basically any website metric - a lone number is fairly useless, it needs the context of another relevant metric before we can draw meaningful conclusions from them. This is a problem that I think afflicts many web analytics tools today.
I couldn't agree more. You've always got to think of the overall context of the website to glean the best insights from your data.
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Rob
Great Post and sometimes bounce rate are also associated with the page speed. This is the main case interms of an ecommerce website where there are multiple pages involved. Many biggies like Walmart and Amazon would have faced these issues in the initial stages.
Hi Josh,
That's an interesting point. Glad you liked the article.
Thanks,
Rob
Hey Rob,
Nice Post. I am going to try that code now. Hoping for positive results.
Glad you liked it. Best of luck!
Rob
Congratulations for the post , Rob.
Thank you for clarifying the issue of abandonment or rebound, which are often confused .
Thanks Alberto.
Rob
Suppose someone has a website that has short information, but user satisfying, in this case, what should be the strategy to adjust bounce rate because user to this website and get exit quick.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the great article. I have one technical question: Will the additional line of code affect time on site on all exit pages? Meaning will it set time on site to 15 seconds (in your example) the exit page?
Thanks a lot for your help.
Cheers,
Jochen
Hi Jochen,
Glad you liked it!
If I understand your question correctly, you have nothing to worry about. This code essentially triggers a hit (event) so that Google knows not to count a bounce if someone arrives on the website and spends at least 15 seconds on the page. It doesn't set the time on site (or time on page) at 15 seconds.
Rob
I don't know this and I'm going to do it in my website to improve my bounce rat. Thank you for!
Hope it works for you!
Rob
Great article Rob! Very clever idea, altering the GA code to get an "adjusted bounce rate."
I've always found bounce rate an interesting metric and one that can be misleading if used on it's own. Using events, goals, page views, social shares, and scroll tracking in conjunction with bounce rate are excellent ways to help see if people are interested/engaged in your content or as Avinash Kaushik says it “I came, I puked, I left.”
What are your thoughts on sites that are splitting up their content posts into multiple pages in order to combat bounce rate? I personally find it somewhat annoying when I'm trying to read a post, and have to constantly hit "next page" in order to read the entire post...I would much rather just have all the content scrollable on one page. It's even worse when on a mobile device and they've positioned a large banner ad right next to the "next" button...what a nightmare! haha.
Hi Olin,
I couldn't agree more, I find it very annoying. I've noticed a lot of sites that had done it are now backtracking and putting all of the content on the one page again. I'd be curious to know what's causing this reversal.
I think this is a really good example of what happens when people don't fully understand bounce rate and obsess about it as a KPI.
I think it's very easy to tie yourself in knots trying to find 'hacks' to artificially improve website metrics such as bounce rate, but it's not going to do you any favours in the long term. I'd definitely be in agreement with you on this.
Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you liked the post!
Rob
I agree with you, good article :)
Thanks Ozgur!
Rob
Useful post, thanks Rob, as stated above, bounce rate can tell us if your site its helpful to visitors, or not but it has to be checked and revised with other metrics.
Hi Alex,
Absolutely, couldn't agree more. Glad you found it useful.
Thanks,
Rob
As others have stated, I do not think adjusting your bounce rate this way is a good idea in any way.
The reason that I do not agree w/ this method is that setting a timeout of 30 seconds (meaning that if the visitor is still on the page at 30 seconds then push a track event) is simple: just because they're on the page for 30 seconds does not mean that they have interacted with it in any way
They could have a tab open and never read the content, then close it. It's still a bounce in my opinion, and should be counted as such, no matter how long they're sitting with it open.
The right way, which I discuss in my long article about bounce rates, is instead to install scrollDepth as one method. Using scrolldepth, as the user navigates down the page (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) then an event will be fired indicating that they scrolled down your page which is an actual interaction.
This is in addition to enabling events onClick or onFocus of interactive elements within your pages that might take the user off of your page.
That would be the right way to approach this challenge; setting a timeout at 30 seconds will just mislead you.
Really interesting take, David, and I really enjoyed reading through your post as well. Recommend folks who are interested check out his link above.
Hi David,
I agree that the method described above isn't perfect, but I think it definitely gives you a better better bounce rate metric than the default bounce rate in my opinion. Any way you can get more info on how people are behaving on your site will help to give you insights, but few are going to give you full visibility (even tracking scroll length won't be 100% accurate).
What I've described above is a good first step to get people thinking about bounce rate and what it actually means.
Really enjoyed your post too, really interesting stuff in there.
Thanks,
Rob
Hey, Rob, awesome article!
The thing I was the most curious about was...did this "increase" of your bounce rate led to any search rankings improvements?
Hey Rok,
Thanks a million. Glad you liked it.
There's no ranking improvement that I'd attribute directly to this. I'm sure Google bear this in mind in their algorithm (using dwell time, etc.). This shouldn't be viewed as a way to 'game' Google and artificially bring down your bounce rate, but as a way to improve your reporting and to get more visibility on if users are reading your content.
Thanks again,
Rob
Wow, bounce rates dropping by 80%! If I wasn't so scared by a paragraph of code I might be interested in trying this. As it is now, I sure hope some smart businesses set this up and then start waving at Google to come index their site or something. We know that a high bounce rate isn't good. Fresh exit pages don't help much either.
Hey Greg,
I know it looks intimidating, but that snippet of code is actually really simple to implement. It's actually just your standard Google Analytics tag with one extra line:
setTimeout("_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', '15_seconds', 'read'])",15000);
The above is set to trigger the event after 15 seconds. I'd urge you to test it on your own site (be sure to change the time to whatever you deem to be appropriate) and see what impact it has.
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Rob, Great post, very interesting. I tried to implement this but found that I now have the new Universal Analytics code installed any help adding the setTimeout in this would be appreciated i.e.
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-x', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
This aerticle has an exmple using the universal code.
https://urlprofiler.com/blog/adjusted-bounce-rate/
Hi Rob,
Great article. I always have trouble using bounce rate as a metric as in the industry I work in (voucher / coupon), a bounce can actually be a good thing e.g. a user found the voucher / coupon they were looking for, and therefore move onto the merchant site to redeem that voucher / coupon.
What I would love to be able to tell, is that users coming from search engines, how many bounce back to the search results rather than move onto another website. That would be a bad bounce, showing a user didn't satisfy their query on your site. I think the answer to this question is no, but is this possible to get that in GA?
Hey Simon,
That's a great question and the honest answer is I don't know. It might be possible if you use Google Tag Manager with some custom code but that's outside my area of expertise. Check out Simo Ahava's post here on a similar Google Analytics hack.
Thanks,
Rob
Thanks Rob, will check that out.
Simon
Rob,
Thanks for sharing this fascinating guide, especially the code.
But still I have a question, as we know bounce rate is one of the factors that can impact ranking in Google search engine. So don’t you think, it’s a half-done solution as it will only impact the reporting structure in Google Analytics but not in Google’s account. Kind of uncertain fix for Google. What you think?
Hi Asim,
You're exactly right. The purpose of implementing adjusted bounce rate should be to improve reporting and the insights you can get from bounce rate as a metric.
This isn't going to trick Google into thinking you have a lower bounce rate. They have their own ways of figuring if your content is engaging (dwell time, etc.) and they're well aware of adjusted bounce rate. So if you're trying to fool Google, adjusted bounce rate's not going to do that.
Thanks,
Rob
I don't think even if this is going to "trick" Google somehow the bounce rate should have a huge impact. I think it will only change your analytic results as Rob mentioned.
Interesting idea. But I'm in the camp of "more trouble than it's worth". It's a fuzzy adjustment of a fuzzy metric. I've been using the Chrome extension Page Analytics (by Google). The data has been invaluable for tweaking site performance.
Hi Rob,
I want to know that from where i ll get the segment of after adjusted bounce rate and before adjusted bounce rate.
Would this be something to still consider if the bounce rate is 35 - 40%? We have a online store that we also deal with bigger items solely over the phone or in email / fax, that info is on the homepage or at the top / bottom of each page, so in under 5 to 10 secs a user can have that info and be onward, yet our bounce rate ( after weeding out referral spam ) is pretty low.
The bigger issue is adding more java to the site, with a nice 1.48secs loadtime, adding even just a little bit more makes me wonder if it's worth it or not.
Opinions?
Hi there,
I think it's important to point out that the purpose of implementing adjusted bounce rate shouldn't be to reduce bounce rate, it should be to get greater value out of bounce rate as a metric. So if you think that you could get value out of knowing what percentage of users are leaving before a specified time limit, I think it's something worth considering regardless of your current bounce rate.
However, I'd err on the side of caution in terms of the time limit. I'd be nervous setting it to 5 or 10 seconds, for example, as it could easily take a user longer than that to decide whether they want to bounce or not.
In terms of load time, Google say that any slow-down should be insignficant and in the case of our own website, we have seen no increase in load time whatsoever.
Thanks,
Rob
Why is the article mentioning only outdated Analytics code and not Universal Analytics? As this blog post is my entry page and now I have to leave it to search for the Universal Analytics code adjustment, I guess I'm in the adjusted bounce category lol
Rob,
Can you elaborate more on "It's also very important to bear in mind that if a user bounces, they are not included in site metrics such as average session duration"?
Does that mean a bounced session is not recorded as an actual session or pageview?
-Brittany
Hi Brittany,
No, they're included in those metrics but not in time on page or session duration metrics as these metrics require a 2nd pageview to start recording.
Rob
Thanks for sharing this post. I don´t think so that bounce rate is the key. It can be a good indicator that your page is very useful for your users or the opposite. We need to complement bounce rate with other metrics to get something useful.
I absolutely agree. Bounce rate by itself doesn't tell us too much, but when used in the context of other metrics it can be very useful.
Thanks,
Rob
A high bounce rate combined with a high avg. time spent on page could definitely be an indicator that the visitor found their answer and went on their way. Another great reason to implement Adjusted Bounce Rate.
You are right best solution for a high avg. time spent on page , add a video for topic of page. Or step by step images.
Awesome Articles, @Rob
Fantastic article, with some great insight. I hadn't heard about that function, and will definitely be trying it out, to see more realistic figures for bounces. I've been using Yoast Google Analytics, but that does not give you the option to add this line of code. May do it manually now :) BTW, something to bear in mind, via Google Analytics blog... One thing website owners should be vary of, though, that not only the function may slow down the users' experience, even insignificantly, but will also increase the volume of hits your site sends to Google Analytics, which might bring your usage over the limit (currently set at 10 mln hits per month). As such, this fix should only be applied when necessary and justified by the concept of the website and the landing pages.
Regards:
Hi Ali,
Thanks for the kind words.
Definitely worth bearing those things in mind, though in our experience there has been no slow down. The hit limit is definitely important to bear in mind if you have a high traffic website. If you find you're exceeding the hit limit, it might be worth looking at increasing the time interval in the code.
Thanks,
Rob
I've done some (limited) research on how to get better figures from GA, and while I don't think jacking up the default bounce rate is the best solution, it's a step in the right direction. I've seen some pages that talked about tracking the time on page only when the tab was actually in focus on the browser, which seems like an ideal solution. The code implementation was way over my head though.
I'd love to see a step by step for setting that up!
Michael
Hey Michael,
I totally agree that it's not the perfect solution. However, it's really simple to implement and as you say, is a good first step.
Thanks for reading,
Rob
seo level this is not much. but it is a good way to edintificar desarrolo percentage and a web to learn and indetificar rebound in 15 seconds. thank you
Is there a way to keep the bounce rate as is, and just make sure time on page is tracked regardless of whether the visitor bounces?
Yes, you can use Riveted, a JS-based plugin for your website and Analytics: https://riveted.parsnip.io/
people have been talking social signals for a while but my feeling is links that get real traffic will be the ones they start giving weight to not social metrics. Also user experience is the one no one is paying attention too . things like bounce rate time on site and CTR are tops. most people are not paying attention to the change occurring.
Hi Warren,
I agree, I think user experience is still massively undervalued. At the end of the day, even if all of your marketing channels are firing on all cylinders, if the user experience on your website is poor, people aren't going to stick around or come back.
Thanks,
Rob
Will it work for Universal Google Analytics(analytics.js) ?
Hey,
Yep, this works on Universal Analytics.
Thanks,
Rob
I have read and its really helpful to me. I just want to know that i have a website www.edatamine.com is seo friendly and data entry services provider i just want to improve my bounce rate so what kind of steps i have to take ??
Hi,
The above method isn't to artificially improve your bounce rate, it's to improve the bounce rate metric itself so you can get richer insights from it.
Best of luck,
Rob
I checked my google analytic and my website bounce tare is very high.and i am really worry about it.but thank to this blog post, I got many new things about this post.like how to time set and other. Really its a grate blog post on this topic.i think many marketing executive do't know about this.
Thanks a million Bhushan. Glad you enjoyed it!
Rob
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the insightful post and sharing the code-snippet. Indeed, bounce rate plays a role in gauging the user experience of a page and it's quite essential for the sites to keep users for a long time.
I just wanted to know, by altering the adjustment in bounce rate, will it not create any contradiction with Google's standard? I mean, we know lots of studies about high bounce rate could be the reason of ranking drop becuase the users are not finding that result helpful. So, how Google will gonna take our personalized time period in their account?
Hi Umar,
Glad you liked it!
It's a very good question. What I can say is that Google are well aware of adjusted bounce rate, so I have no doubt sure they have factored it in to their algorithm. How do they do it? - the honest answer is I don't know, and Google are unlikely to let us know but I'd be very interested to find out myself.
Thanks,
Rob
Thanks for share your experience, i like the post
Thanks a million,
Rob
Thanks for the information. Very interesting post! Enriched with the comments as well. Bounce rate is difficult to analyse on its own without having into consideration other parameters, but I think that adjusted (incuding time and scroll) bounce rate is more "realistic". The problem here comes also finding out which is the average bounce rate depending on the activity of your website. By the way Rob, very helpful the hubspot link.
I guess it is understood but avoinding referral spam in our GA can help to have a more accurate bounce rate.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your kind words. Glad you liked it!
Rob
Now m working on my blog and my blog bounce rate is around 18 so plz check this and suggest that i m going to a right way or not
https://evokerock.com
Hi Naveen! Just a heads-up, this question is much better suited to our Q&A forum. You're much more likely to get an answer there. :)
Yeah this Great Point...Rob Beirne.... I have few sites which is having bounce rate more than 70%..... I will go for this innovative Idea....Thanks A Lot
As I've mentioned in other comments, be sure you're implementing this for the right reasons: to improve bounce rate as a metric and not to artificially lower your bounce rate.
Thanks,
Rob
@Rob i have no word to describe my excitement after reading your post. I am in online marketing more than 8 years and till today i always valued Bounce rate as all other online marketing expert gives. I never thought the other aspects of bounce rate. I completely agree if a user is satisfied by visiting one page of a website then why should he/she will visit the other page. In that case, there is no option to get worried about bounce rate. Infact, we can take it another way, that is a positive side about the page that is it effectively fulfilling the needs of a visitor.
I just loved the post, i got to know that i and lots of other users who is reading this post needs to think in different manner also.
Hi Nazre,
I'm really glad I could help! Bounce rate is definitely a misunderstood metric but once you realise what it actually means, you can use it much more effectively.
Thanks so much for your kind words. Much appreciated!
Rob
This is a great idea. Moving the needle on bounce rate is a big challenge.
On a related note, I'm a little surprised at the reference to an average bounce rate of 70-90%. I have read elsewhere and seen on the sites that I support an average more in the range of 40-60%.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for reading. Glad you liked it!
That stat is an average bounce rate for landing pages. It's taken from Hubspot and they give the average bounce rate of content websites as 40-60%. You can find out more bounce rate stats from them here.
Thanks again,
Rob
Great post! Thanks heaps!
Regarding "average session duration" and "bouncers". I have just looked into this a few days ago and was under the impression that that bouncers DO have a negative impact on your SITE's "average session duration" (see https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets#view=detail&group=session&jump=ga_avgsessionduration). But maybe the author wanted to refer to Average Time on Page (see https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets#view=detail&group=page_tracking&jump=ga_avgtimeonpage) where bouncers are actually excluded.
Hi Jochen,
Apologies, I probably could have been more clear on this. Average session duration for bouncers is usually considered to be 0 and this skews the average session duration metric. A good explanation of this can be found here.
The average time on page metric ignores exit pages so this probably would have been a better example.
Thanks for keeping me honest!
Rob
That is a great insight and I had never heard of that function till now and will most definitely be using that in the future awesome article.
Thanks, Glad you enjoyed it!
Rob
Bounce rate is the king, there isn't nothing better than this to know if your potencial customers are interesed in your products, blog,...
I think that really depends on how you're measuring bounce rate. If you're using the default metric in Google Analytics I'd have to disagree with you for the reasons I mentioned in the post.
Thanks,
Rob
Hey Rob,
I can't stop myself to say 'Awesome Post" .. Great work done mate, and congratulations for your first post here. Well, there are two sides of coin, sometimes marketers show first side, like having high bounce rate means there is something wrong with your website, the bounce rate should be below 30%, that would be great.. And at the second time marketers like you says, high bounce rate does not mean visitor did not complete the activity, they might just came to take the phone num, Email ID, etc..I would be 100% agree with this too..
But what should we do believe on? High bounce rate of low? Because, both the terms are right. I have watched an interview of Mr. Avinash Kaushik, and I was quite impressed with him that he said - Zero Bounce Rate means Zero Revenue..he explained that, bounce rate is required on the website, and it plays a very important role too..
I am Analytics certifeid professional and I know analytics so much, but at this point I am also stuck, please someone share their views on this..
Thanks and keep sharing :)
Hi Shubham,
Thanks for the kind words.
I'd definitely agree with Mr. Avinash Kaushik, bounce rate can be an important metric but implementing adjusted bounce rate makes it even better. I think it's very important to point out that adjusted bounce rate shouldn't be implemented to artificially bring down your bounce rate, but to get a more accurate idea of how users are engaging with your content.
I think you always have to bear in mind what the purpose of each page is and judge your bounce rate accordingly. I don't think there's any on-size-fits-all bounce rate metric we should all be aiming for.
Thanks,
Rob