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Do Bounce Rates Mean Squat?? Does Your Site Suck if Bounce Rates are High?

by Steve Faber
9 replies
Conventional wisdom is that bounce rates affect your online life in all manner of ways. Google hates you if your bounce rates are high, and is less likely to send you visitors. Your visitors hate you, so they're bouncing away to go seek the Holy Grail on another site.

Is it true? Does your site suck if bounce rates are high? Are your visitors simply landing there due to your spectacular SEO efforts, discovering total crap, and then saying "I'm getting the f$#% out of here ASAP!"?

After my traditional morning Google Analytics perusal, I'd have to say that that's not always the case. On a couple of my blogs the pages with the highest bounce rates also have extremely high time on page figures. The average time on page for web visitors in aggregate is between 10 and 15 seconds. On many of my pages with high bounce rates, they are spending 2.5 - 6 minutes per page, and some pages average about 8 minutes.

To me that means that the visitors are not leaving after one page view because they didn't find what they wanted and were off to seek their fortunes elsewhere, it's quite the opposite. They got there, spent quite a lot of time there, and learned enough about what they were looking for that they felt no need to search further on my site for more.

They either clicked away to sign up for my list, went to look at a product I recommended on an affiliate link, or possibly, yes it's true, went back to G to search for more info.

So, am I all wet, or do you think, by it self, that the vaunted bounce rate stat is not a very good indicator of how much visitors thought of your site?
#bounce #high #rates #site #site quality #squat
  • Profile picture of the author Kael41
    I think the BR as determined by the big G goes towards different factors regarding your site. Just like "site load time" plays into how well you rank (imo), I think a high BR goes towards how Adsense ads are shown and what kind of monetary conversion you make as an advertiser.

    I can't prove up these assumptions, but this is just my gut feeling after being almost 7 years in the Adsense game now.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lauryn
    Does your system have statistics that show bounce rate and exit rate?

    An exit rate means someone left the site after taking an action on it - whether they clicked to another page on your site, or they clicked off through a link.

    A bounce rate, as analytics expert Kaushik puts it, means "I came, I saw, I vomited and I bounced without touching anything."

    If you can determine how to track which keywords have the highest bounce rates, you'll then be able to decide how to best determine whether your bounce rate is or isn't favorable.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dave Rodman
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      A lot of people try to justify high bounce rates by saying "They found what they were looking for". While that might be true in a lot of cases, I've always seen a high correlation between a crappy page and a high bounce rate.

      Of course, exceptions exist.
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      • Profile picture of the author Lauryn
        Originally Posted by Dave Rodman View Post

        A lot of people try to justify high bounce rates by saying "They found what they were looking for". While that might be true in a lot of cases, I've always seen a high correlation between a crappy page and a high bounce rate.

        Of course, exceptions exist.
        Agreed. If you use Google Analytics, for example, then a BR means they left without action. If you see a high exit rate, chances are they found what they needed, exceptions withstanding.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Faber
        Originally Posted by Dave Rodman View Post

        A lot of people try to justify high bounce rates by saying "They found what they were looking for". While that might be true in a lot of cases, I've always seen a high correlation between a crappy page and a high bounce rate.

        Of course, exceptions exist.
        Of course I love to justify things, but it seems to me that if they stayed on a page for a fairly lengthy visit, they must have found something that kept them there, or they're just very slow readers.

        I would agree that if they bounced after 10 - 20 seconds, the page probably sucked, but if they stayed for 4 minutes, they're either slow decision makers, or they found something of value there to hold them for a while.
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  • Profile picture of the author erichammer
    I'm seeing a high bounce rate for my site, but I suspect it's in part due to all the spammers who are trying to get comments published. I have one article that has had at least 30 comments sent to it. Not one of them actually references the article, but I assume that page was put on a list somewhere of good places to get a link from. Since these are all bots, I know they're coming, leaving their crap and then walking away. However, I do see that my average time on page is around two minutes meaning that even with those spammers screwing up my numbers, the real visitors are really staying and really looking at other stuff. I just need to get more real traffic though...

    That's my theory at least...

    Eric
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  • Profile picture of the author JamesGw
    A high bounce rate is normally bad, but it really depends on what you're trying to do with your site and what your goals are. If you're getting paid per view on your ads, then I guess it doesn't really matter, although it'd generally mean fewer return visitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author Amy Carczak
    Hmmm ... someone comes to your site, then leaves immediately ...this is a really bad sign that your website is not engaging them in the purpose they hoped for when they clicked on your link to get to your site.

    If you're paying for traffic, you have a huge problem!
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Faber
      Originally Posted by Amy Carczak View Post

      Hmmm ... someone comes to your site, then leaves immediately ...this is a really bad sign that your website is not engaging them in the purpose they hoped for when they clicked on your link to get to your site.

      If you're paying for traffic, you have a huge problem!
      I agree, but I'm wondering about is what if they don't leave immediately, but only visit one page on your site.

      Also you could still win big if you're paying for traffic, the visitor just has to pay you more to leave than you paid to get them there. If you're successful at arbitrage, you're using that principle.
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