A PUZZLE for all my SEO experts here...

Well, google aint keeping track....so.....I hope you are getting paid for this time waster.

You are the perfect example as to why google would NOT keep track...or even care to.

Paul

This article might help answer your questions. Google does keep track, sort of....
http://help.analyticsedge.com/google...sion-duration/

There's a lot of theories out there as far as GA Tabbed tracking. Here's something I found that included a test at the end:
http://www.cardinalpath.com/tabs-imp...n-page-metric/

You can draw your own conclusion about the tab thing. Lots of other older resources in this as well.

Now, onto your bounce question. It's important to note that by default a bounce is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

So, if you have let's just say, 50,000 words on your page that a visitor goes to, spends 4 hours reading it, calls his entire family over and they all spend 4 hours reading it and then they celebrate on the discoveries they have learned from your page and then close it out... it's a bounce.

Another example is VSL pages. Most are the ugly-VSL style (just a video+headline). Let's say they watched the entire VSL but didn't take any action and just left the page. That's also a bounce.

However, in GTM/GA you can create custom events to trigger on specific events (Time on Page, Mouse Scrolls etc) that will allow you to figure out what you're "real" bounce rate is. So for example, you can set Triggers on the VSL page for 5 Minutes Time Spent on Page and now any visitors who spend at least 5 minutes on that page will no longer count as a bounce. Anyone who leaves prior to the 5 minute mark is a bounce.

Bounce rate, from a default implementation standpoint, is very deceptive.

As mentioned by Google, only interactions with the website count. Otherwise, it is considered a bounce. I don't think opening browser tabs make any difference.

However, as Wile E Coyote mentioned GTM would be a great tool to get specific interactions counted towards the non-bounce rate.

But why you would do that thing ? you think google will rank you ?