Does Your "Bounce Rate" Affect Your SERP Position?

19 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hi all.

I've been reading that many folks are saying to use quality content that is targeted to the visitors in order to help your site to rank better. Their reasoning for this is that having quality content lowers the "bounce rate" of your site. That is, they cause the visitor to stay longer on your site before leaving.

Now, I'm not arguing having quality content on a website, that's a given. However, does Google monitor how long someone spends on your site and do they really reward/penalize your site if searchers spend more/less time on it?

Thanks for any of your observations!
#affect #bounce rate #position #serp
  • Profile picture of the author Jon Potts
    There is going to be no cut and dry answer to this but I will explain why bounce rate matters. Google wants to provide search results that yield... well a result. If the user found your website and then bounced out it means the result was not sufficient enough. If I were Google and the website in position 1-3 has a higher than usual bounce rate or an increasing bounce rate since it has hit high position then I would question its ability to provide a relevant result.
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    • Profile picture of the author packerfan
      According to your logic if a user searches for "what does 2+2 =" and my website is in the first position with the answer 4, and then the user leaves my site, that's a bad thing.

      It's not quite as simple as you're making it.
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    • Originally Posted by Jon Potts View Post

      There is going to be no cut and dry answer to this
      Yea this is correct. Only Google will know for sure just how much it effects your SERP, but my guess would be that it definitely does play a part.

      Google is all about relevancy. They want their users to have the best experience possible, so when they see people bouncing off your site like a rubber ball, this tells them that the user is not finding what they searched for.
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  • Profile picture of the author evertd
    I have to agree, if you page gives the perfect answer, your bounce rate might very well be 100%. And in that case, you could argue that time on site could be a factor.
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  • Profile picture of the author timpears
    If my visitor comes to my site and reads the title and sees one of my ads right below that and clicks on it, then that would be a bounce. Do you really think that Google is gong to hold that against me? I kind of doubt it. I don't buy the bounce rate belief personally. I may be wrong, but I have had bounce rates over 80% and made a constant $100 to $200+ per day from a single site. It didn't stop Google from placing my articles on the first page of the search results.
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    • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
      A high bounce rate in itself doesn't mean it is a bad site. I would think google looks to see if you continue your search, going back to the google search results and looking at more sites. If they did find the answer they were looking for on your site, they wouldn't continue browsing the other sites.

      Google watches and knows all. I am sure they can figure out what sites are providing users the answer they are looking for and whether it takes them one click or 10 to get it.
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  • Profile picture of the author stelweb
    Bounce backs as opposed to bounce rate is a clear indication of a site or web page's quality. Try to get bounce backs to the minimum by all means.
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  • Profile picture of the author StoneWilson
    I'm still testing it now. On August I built two WP blogs with same theme, two blogs targeted two different keywords, all contents are original, just got backlinks from my old blogs, in a word... I built them with the same method, the only obvious difference is on one blog I added a "related posts" plugin, on the other one I didn't. Now more than 4 months passed, I still can't tell any differences, the blog with "related posts" got 60% bounce rate, the other got 77%, but their keywords ranked almost the same. I'm confused now.
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  • Profile picture of the author kennykjtan
    I really doubt that bounce rate make a different on SERP. My sites are still on position #1 even though I got bounce rate of 67% and the other one is 73%
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  • Profile picture of the author C Rebecca
    Bounce rate does affect your SERP rankings... Technically speaking, there are more than one type of bounce rate and the one that affects your SERP is actual bounce rate. Actual bounce rate is the time spent on the web pages by the organic user and then return to the SERP results.

    This tells the search engines that your website is less valuable for the user and it may affect your rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author alexschmidt
    hi,
    i have seen that bounce rate really affects your search engine rankings because according to Google is the Bounce rate is high in your website that means people are not willing to stay in your website.
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    • Profile picture of the author whiplashclaims
      I am pretty sure bounce rate affects your serps, as the longer people spend on your site, its an indicatioin that it is what they are looking for.
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  • Profile picture of the author msu
    Bounce rate is just one of many factors that may affect your rankings.

    Ultimately, Google is looking for ways to detect that users were glad they found your site and they seem to be putting in place increasingly sophisticated algorithms to try to do that.
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  • Profile picture of the author elexmedia
    The bounce rate alone might not be used by Google but combined with other factors, it could have an effect on the rankings. For example, Google could measure how many people start a new search for the same topic after visiting your web page. That would be an indicator that your website is not suitable for the chosen keyword.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
    Google is using on-page metrics in their algo, although I believe it is just a small piece of the puzzle.

    This data they can source pretty easily from Chrome users.
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  • Profile picture of the author Juvv2096
    You should try asnd lower your bounce rate if possible, but on the other hand, that one page could have all the information needed and they just werent interested. The bounce rate of some of my sites is high, (50-70%) but they are ranking in top 5 on google so I dont think it has anything to do with your SERP Position at all
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  • Profile picture of the author JanusNg
    If I were Google my customers' satisfaction would be on the top of my list. So it's easy to understand that Google will do everything it can to get the most relevant results to its searchers. Bounce rate is definitely one of the factors that is used to determine a page's relevancy. But it's also not the only factor. Regardless, focusing on giving quality (content) is key to success, online or offline.
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  • Profile picture of the author sanjeevkumaar
    Because google is try to give the best and most relevant results to their users so bounce rate can affect your website ranking results.
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  • Profile picture of the author treezie
    I have a site with a bounce rate nearing 85% and I'm still in 1st position and have been for over 3 months now (with it slipping to #2 once in awhile). However, the caveat is that when I SEOed the bad boy, I SEOed an inner page...so the ranking page is an inner page...and most people who come through my site come through that page...and then leave.
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