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Is Bounce Rate a Google Ranking Factor?

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Either Way, You Should Pay Attention to it

Bounce rates are a metric that may become more of a factor as SEOs struggle with the ever-changing world of SERPs, which some are predicting to be become much more personalized over the coming year. As discussed in an interview with Mike McDonald (video below), big name SEO Bruce Clay notes that going forward, SEOs are going to have to look at analytics, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, etc., and ask themselves questions like did I get the conversion I was after?

A post today from SEO Black Hat seems to indicate that bounce rates are already a significant factor in ranking. They provide the following screenshots showing Google Analytics data for a "white hat" site (click any of them to view the larger versions at SEO Black Hat:


Overall Traffic

Google traffic
Google Traffic

bounce rates
Bounce Rates

Hmm. See any correlation there? "This is exactly the pattern you would expect from a program designed to flush out terms with higher bounce rates and test them across other sties," writes the post's author QuadsZilla. "Moreover, this isn’t the first time I’ve recognized this pattern, it happens every 2-3 months on average." Quadzilla then notes the absence of any such information in Google's SEO starter guide, but points to a few cluews in the Analytics support page.

So, maybe bounce rates are something that you should be worried about. In all honesty, you should've been worried about them anyway, if nothing more than to keep people at your site. Nevermind if they got there through Google. The following video from SES a few months back goes over some Bounce rate information as Mike talks to Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, and Google Analytics group manager Brett Crosby.

Jason Miller offers some additonal insight based on the video, and Quadzilla is promising some tips on reducing bounce rates in the future.

About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

73 Comments

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We provide affordable

We provide affordable Website Design, Flash design, Customized Web Application development, E-Commerce Solutions and website maintenance

Thanks

I want to say thank you for this great video! Very nice...

Hmm. See any correlation

Hmm. See any correlation there? "This is exactly the pattern you would expect from a program designed to flush out terms with higher bounce rates and test them across other sties," writes the post's author QuadsZilla. "Moreover, this isn’t the first time I’ve recognized this pattern, it happens every 2-3 months on average." Quadzilla then notes the absence of any such information in Google's SEO starter guide, but points to a few cluews in the Analytics support page.

page rank

But the bouce rate is not taken into account when computing the PR, right?

banball dance all night,

banball dance all night,

Be careful with statistics

The previous commenter is correct in noticing that the bounce rate decreases in that graph when the traffic decreases. However if Google was truly penalizing the site in those hi-bounce keyword searches, then the result would be a lowering of overall bounce rate because you'd lose those hi-bounce hits altogether. The visitors wouldn't even hit the site to bounce off. Impossible to tell if that's happening though, without more information.

I wish if we knew for sure

I wish we knew for sure if bounce rate was considered for high SERPs or not. I would make life so much easier.

Thanks for this good post.

Thanks for this good post. Yes, I do believe that bounce rate is a factor, and I've been looking into ways to increase it. Now my website is a bit over 50%...

Bounce rate and https

We have a http entry page that is the starting point for customers using our SaaS application. When people hit that page they are immediately being "bounced" to our https secure application, and currently there is no google tracking code on our application pages. The entry pages are therefore being considered bounces.

Q. Would placing tracking code on our https application effectively decrease this bounce rate?

Anything else we should consider here?

Nice Post About Bounce Rate

Dear Chris, I have gone through the complete post and discussions in the comment section. Actually you are right about the complete bounce rate theory. I wants to know about "How to decrease bounce rate of our Blogs?".

If my website's bounce rate is around 75-80% but website is performing well with respect to no. of sales and revenues. Then what should i do? I have to go for decreasing Bounce Rate or it's fine if i am getting what i want.

IMHO bounce rate is a bigger factor then we all thought.

I have been wondering about bounce rates as a ranking factor. There are several sites that I have been tracking with a 3rd party tracking tool (no Google analytics on the sites) and I have noticed a few things:

- Sites with low bounce rates rank better.
- Sites with more content rank better.
- Sites where the user stays on the site for a long time rank better.

There are certain sites that can accomplish all of these easier than others. For example, a 2,000 page e-commerce site can accomplish all three easier than a 10 page site whose content never changes. But Google shouldn't penalize the 10 page site over the 2,000 page site IMHO. For example, why should a service orientated person need a 2,000 page site? They probably don't have the time to maintain such a site or can afford someone to do this.

The problem is how do you do this so that it doesn't become a full time job for each site?

I really don't think it

I really don't think it does, i think pagerank is more based off of the size of your website page wise.

Check out my Florida web design company, my website design portfolio and learn more about my web design companies website

What counts as a bounce?

I use a 3rd party software as my online catalog. So my site has to link out to my catalog (different URL).
When a user comes to my site and immediately clicks the catalog link, is taht considered part of the bounce rate?

Nice vídeo... I'll visit more

Hi,

Very nice video... I like a lot the info

Bounce rate doesn't seem to

Bounce rate doesn't seem to be a factor for SERP. And securing the top SERP is the most important factor for attracting visitors.

A lot of users come to our

A lot of users come to our site looking for a certain product, but bounce because we sell in bulk and not individual products. So we get a high bounce rate on some individual product pages. Any suggestions?

Additional product info

If I were shopping for individual promotional items and found your site with mostly (or all) bulk items I would think I'd stay longer and dig deeper if you tell me everything I need to know about an item. One, you'll increase the on-page key phrases and two, you give me a reason to stay and read more. Maybe try building an "additional information" page for products with high bounce rates. Then link to these new pages from the main product page with either an atractive graphic, or a "more information about xyz here" link. Experiment with one high bounce rate page and see it it works. It probably won't increase sales, but it might lower your bounce rate therefore making your site more attractive to G on the subject matter.

bounce rate

On one of my websites, there is a bounce rate of 40.32% and it's filled with a bunch of good quality information. But then I have another website that has a bounce rate of 76.23% and it's filled with not so good content.

I guess the better the content, the lower the bounce rate ?

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is a good indicator of website quality, but it is hard to get for all websites.

if a website does not run analytics, how google can calculate it??

 

Hmm bounce rate is not at

Hmm bounce rate is not at all an issue for me at least for me... my bounce rate is less than 30 percent.

Bounce Rates and what they mean

There are a number of reasons for high bounce rates off of organic search traffic, including a relatively weak website design and layout or organic traffic which is not really that relevant (this could be due to relatively weak keywords on which the site is optimized). In the world of SEO, I guess one of the main questions is: how well is the site traffic you are receiving actually converting into phone calls or contact or appointments or sales or whatever it is that you call a conversion? Brad Lombardo

Bounce rate is not always an

Bounce rate is not always an accurate guage of user experience.  Often times if you have a lot of untargeted visitors this can lead to high bounce rates.  But this doesn't mean your content isn't solid.

Bounce rate

Not sure if this article is accurate over bounce rate and here's why:

Most blogs have content on the main page (index.php), and in this case a visitor leave from that main page which will increase the bounce rate. In my estimation this doesn't weigh in the overall pagerank, but incoming links do.

Hopefully I made a valid point.

pay attention to the video

Did you see the waitstaff in the background of the video carrying those huge mugs of beer?  Is Bruce Clay trying to send us a subliminal message that we need to start drinking more beer?

Forget SERPs, Google results are turing into BURPs.

Big

Undulating

Results

Pages

 

Drink 'em up.

 

Bounce Rate

Agree, one should add bounce rate as one of the important metrics. Every change made in homepage or any other landing page can be related to the bounce rate.

A low bounce rate proves the you have quality site and visitor wants to explore more of it.

But if you have affiliate site or displaying adds then you can go with high bounce rate but it should show in ur increase in revenues

What would be considered a

What would be considered a high bounce rate?

How

Google can track bounce rates from analytics code and alkso if you have the toolbar downloaded.

How exactly does Google

How exactly does Google record the bounce rates?  Doesn't a specific code have to be installed on your webpage?  Maybe I am missing something here.

technology

I know google has already the technology to modify the personalized search results why not do it for regular SERPs ??

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