Various SEOs started to notice a relationship between search engine traffic and bounce rate. The rumor has it that Google now pays more attention than ever to your bounce rate and rewards you for good quality traffic. For those of you not familiar with term:”Bounce rate”, it pretty much indicates the % of users who left your website after seeing just one page. Arguably you can say that your website was no value to your visitor and they left right after checking it out, rather than staying slightly longer to explore.
What we know
Some webmasters can clearly see a relationship between organic traffic and bounce rate. Have a look at some screenshots by SEO black hat. This is just one example out of many. However you can’t rely on one set of results. In order to have a definitive answer you need to experiment with many more websites.
We also know that Google treats bounce rate quite seriously. Here is what Google has to say:
Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.
and
Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.
Thinking logically
Google does not employ idiots. When a change is made there is a genuine, logical reason behind it. So would it make sense for Google to rank based on bounce rate? Why not! It makes a lot of sense for Google to send traffic to those websites that will actually benefit from it rather than those that will scare 90% of the visitors away. On the other hand some websites would naturally have higher bounce rate regardless of their highest quality. For example a dictionary type of website can see a visitor for a few seconds before they grab the word definition they were looking for and go away. Whereas an illegal warez download website with poor navigation can confuse and send the visitor from one page to another for minutes. Why should Google rank second website higher than first?
How does Google know your bounce rate?
Nobody I spoke to was sure. There are a number of possibilities. The most obvious are data from website running Google analytics as well as the toolbar. I assume the toolbar may well work similar to Alexa toolbar even though I could not find much of indication in Google patent information nor privacy policy. In theory Google can even track returning visitors after a certain SERP link has been clicked on.
My experiment
This blog has a very poor bounce rate. It varies day to do but on average it should be between 80% and 90%. I rank well for some boob related keywords so I assume some people come here trying to see some naked pics and end up leaving pretty sharpish in disappointment. I also run Google analytics so this was a perfect opportunity to run a little test. 12 days ago I have decided to remove Google analytics code from this blog, therefore killing a potential “probe” Google can use to establish my bounce rate. The next day I went over my 3 months old Google visitors record. The day after that I had yet another record. I thought I was really onto something there when on day 3 my traffic went back to normal and pretty much remained that way till now.
Conclusion
I don’t think my initial increase in traffic proved anything. The increase did not seem as dramatic as other webmasters have witnessed before. On the other hand my bounce rate stayed the same throughout the experiment. I was only trying to shut one of Google’s eyes. There were still Google toolbar users that I had no control over as well as other potential indicators. I suppose the only proper was of doing this is to actually improve your bounce rate and see if this results to an increase in traffic from Google. I suppose it might be easier to make your bounce rate worse and look for opposite results. I may well try it in the future.
Improving your bounce rate
- Functional website is a must! You need to make sure your website is compatible with different browsers, that your pages load in sufficient time and your design is clutter free and clear.
- Avoid popups/getaways and other aggressive ads.
- Quality and well written content will insure your visitors stay longer.
- Get to know your visitors. Why are they here? Where do they come from? What do they want?
- Improve your ad copy. Whether you are linking to your website or buying ads makes sure your visitors know what they are clicking on and where they are going to end up. Its quality and not quantity. One time visitors will only make your bounce rate worse.
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
Lord. They certainly know how to make everything complicated, don’t they? I often found a web site and got exactly what I wanted on the first page or on the main page. I like sites like that without me having to dig into pages after pages. Sites that I have dig into for into normally lost my interest. So bounce rate is a bad thing? This is annoying.
Yea, I think most people would agree with you. Visit duration might also be taken into account, which should solve the one page problem. However its just speculations at this stage. No one is too sure about the bounce rate affecting search engine results.
Anyhow, at the end of the day high bounce rate is bad regardless of SEO. If people are leaving your website the second they see it, you might as well disregard them as a visitor.
Wow, that was fascinating information!! I will certainly keep this in mind as I continue to increase traffic.
What’s an ideal bounce rate? Is there an statistic for a blog, news site, reference site, etc?
My bounce rate average is 84% and I think that’s pretty bad.
Do you think Google will apply this anytime soon? Thanks for sharing the information.
hi there!
I was told by a well-paid Adsense user that Entrecard droppings offer small rate since bounce rate is not at all seen in the second-only-to-drop-on- a- widget technique.
Is this true? I guess for a blog for paid reviews, Adsense rates don’t matter much since we are more into blog traffic rates rather than the bounce rates.
ark,
The lower the better. Every website is different so I don’t think there are any guidelines. Yea, 84% is similar to mine.
luke,
People started noticing this all the way back in 2007.
rosilie,
EC traffic is indeed a high bounce traffic. Most people don’t hang around on your blog for long. On the other hand EC is a small percentage of my traffic and it does not affect the whole picture. I think only those relying on EC traffic alone should be concerned.
I am not too sure what you mean by Adsense rates. If you want to show others high levels of traffic then high bounce rate does not make any difference. If you are after Adsense clicks then your 80% bounce rate for example would mean that you are missing out on 80% of the clicks.
yeah … i want some boobs
nice info ilia keep on share your experiment.. 
@ rosilie
yeah but a paid review need a good page rank .. the quality of the links building seems not 100% deciding the page rank value. damn.. are page ranks still a mystery ?
This makes no sense to me. Blogs are only one page, what do they mean front page? I’ve seen a few people who start a conversation/article and make people click to read more. I NEVER do that. If I have to go somewhere to read the end of the article, I feel like it’s too time consuming and they’re messing with me. So, pages I might read and enjoy and leave comments; I’ll pass by when they do that. But…I’ve never understood where the other page comes from that they’ve finished the sentence on?
Sandy
Oh poo, forgot I also wanted to ask, how do you even find out what your bounce rate is?
Thanks
looking forward to your visit, welcome mats always out. Please swing by and let me know.
Ilia
Bounce rate always matters a lot, Imagine if a spammer ending up million of webpages using lots of keywords, chances of getting on the first page of search engine is very high.
That’s how automatic blogs always have a dead end (No PR and soon blacklisted from search engines).
Probably that’s why niche blogging is very important.
A high bounce rate is normal for blogs because their content is on one page. There is enough to read on that page before clicking to other content.
You can change that by only showing part of your article and using a ‘read more’ link or even paginate your posts.
You can find out your bounce rate when using Google Analytics.
Changing your bounce rate by defining a bounce time frame can be achieved by ading a small script to your GA tracking script that automatically tracks an event after a specific time.
You can find the source on my blog
Sandy
“Read more” is used for a number of reasons. I use it to send my RSS subscribers to my blog because instead of seeing the whole post via RSS they will only see the first half and will have to click on “read more”. It is also used to avoid the same article appearing twice on the same domain as well as aesthetics.
Have you got access to your server logs or some sort of statistics software like Woopra? B.R. is usually in there.
Harsh Agrawal,
I’m not too sure how you can link B.R. to auto blogs or spamming. Spamming now days is quite targeted. The website being promoted will have a normal B.R. If you are talking about search engine spam then surely search engine traffic is very targeted as well.
Why would autoblogs lose PR? PR is a result of your backlink development. I can make an autoblog post 100% unique articles at random intervals and you won’t be able to tell the difference between an autoblog and a regular blog. How would Google know and why would it want to blacklist it?
Autoblogging is niche blogging. You just do it automatically.
Steven Pauwels,
Bounce rate is often measured in terms of time spent on the page as well. It is 5 seconds with Analytics. So if user spends 3 seconds on your page it counts as a bounce.
Very interesting. I can see Google’s point of view – the only want to make the experience better for the searchers, but pity us poor webmasters!
It’s getting harder and harder to rank well these days unless you’re targetting VERY specific keywords. Long tail stuff. It’s just a big game as the SEO community try to keep up with Google’s algorithms.
I guess the best advice is just to create the best content you can, and let Google rank you as it sees fit. In a perfect world your pages would reach the people who need them, but we all now that isn’t so. You could have the best site in the world with the best content but people wouldn’t find it if you didn’t promote it. Google needs a helping hand sometimes!
One last point: If Google can only track bounce rate via the toolbar and via the analytics code then surely removing the code, and scripting to avoid toolbar detection, or even fool the googlebot, would stop that. There’s probably a lot more to it – but in the end this is Google’s directory and they can do as they see fit. That’s the danger of a monopoly.
Having naked pictures on your blog posts, usually helps alot to keep your bounce rates down I heard! LOL! Just kidding! God someone will read this and actually do this on some site no doubt!
Little bounce rate humor!
Texas Ben
Make your stories exciting with pics and video to keep users longer 9on your pages as well as add a lot of links to similar content. I think GOOG looks at how long they stay as well as the bounce rate, BTW if they click on a Youtube video, GOOG say that it does not count as a bounce.
How about Google Adsense? I assume that Google immediately what the visitors are doing to your website if you run Google Adsense on your page.
Interestingly, how did you rank so high to boobs keyword?
Hi there, I am glad that i found this website while searching DP. Very indepth post. Thanks for sharing.
You are banned on DP :O How come? I feel sorry for you mightyb
This is rather interesting information. Do you think that the SERPs change based on bounce rate? I have a few employment websites with bounce rates that are very high due to the way that users get to the pages through job aggregators. Also, what if you have a micro site with only one page? Then what happens?
I did white hat & black hat SEO techniques to drive traffic, BTW nice article, Thanks for sharing.
I am still waiting for your reply mightyb
Please tell me why are you banned there on DP. I used to read your posts carefully.
Is this 7 day ban or 1 month ban?
Thanks
plin,
I doubt it. You can put Adsense code on a brand new page and that page won’t even get indexed. Therefore Adsense and search engine itself are different things. On the other hand, who knows…
Alex,
Time spent on the website can also be taken into account. Over 5 seconds is not considered as a bounce. So you should not have any problems with one page filled with interesting content.
Udaipur Jokes,
I don’t know and I don’t care. I am not going back there anyway. They banned me because I was selling the same product on both DP and other places. Not quite sure what was their problem with that. I spoke to a few mods I know and they said that people do whatever they want there, mods have not contact with Shawn and the whole place is falling apart. They banned all the great members I used to exchange ideas with so all that’s left now are newbs and scammers I have no interest in.
Yeah this is truth. DP is now full of stupid noobs, I hate them.
BTW I liked your post and ideas so I’ll have my eye here but forum is a good place. Can you please give me a forum where you are a member?
Love reading your posts
Hmmm, this is interesting indeed. It would make sense to have a time limit associated with the bounce rate, as your site could have the information required on page 1. I do think that it makes good sense to include this as a search engine parameter, as it would definitely help clear or demote lots of spammy type pages from the search rankings.
great information man..!!
nice one to watch the trends and you blog…
Greg
gagh! they really have a way of making things extremely unappetizing. i’ve been breaking my nails trying to make sure that my new site doesn’t develop a high bounce rate. my other sites have very high rates but i wonder if that’s because they are under blogger and my regular visitors can just read everything on the spot without having to click or do anything else
I’ve never heard the term “bounce rate” before but it makes good sense to me. I would hope and pray that my posts are interesting enough to make people stay and read more than one post. I have a putting good rating with Alexa for the time my blog has been active and it seems to be dropping daily. I hope to see me under the 100,000 level in the near future. Maybe this bounce rate will help as well. Thanks for this info!
Friends 4 Life!
Was not visiting your blog regularly, found out your were not posting much either. Google can get bounce rate with analytics, toolbar as well as adsense. I am still not convinced that bounce rate can be used reliably to determine quality of a website.
Thanks Ilia for yet another piece of interesting info, made allready 15 automated-blogs (the goal’s 100). How did an old school Turbo Pascal \ Delphi programmer like me didn’t think of it before? I thank your site for the little “push”.
To the point: My 1 page bounce rate is 77.9%, but I really don’t think a site should be rated by the bounce-rate, even thou it will help in reducing spam pages from the search ranks (as said by Marketing Man), I guess you can never have 0% of bounce rate do u?
@ Udaipur Jokes =>
So you hate “stupid noobs”? I guess you have no problem with a “stupid with experience”? Be careful my friend, the “stupid noobs” will beat you ’cause you underestimated them, and the “stupid with experience” will drag you down to his level and then beat you with his experience (LOL). You’re right, but what r u doing at DP? You like having battles of wits with unarmed men?
I still really don’t get it. I don’t know how to read the google stats, I also don’t use subscription, nor do I ever subscribe to someone’s page. If I have to subscrip to leave a comment, I don’t leave a comment. The thing that still makes no sense to me about the one page vs clicking to go somewhere else to finish reading…doesn’t that mean you’re on the one page a shorter time? Isn’t that what we’re trying to avoid? If you start on one page, click to go to another page, you’re not on either page long enough to read or see anything else?
The other thing I don’t get, is people answering your question on their blog like you’ve done here vs coming to my blog and answering so I would know you had answered my question. Isn’t the back and forth traffic, comments something we all strive for? Had I not popped back I would never have known you answered my question. And if your blog post were here for a period of time, I also wouldn’t have seen it. My question/comment to you was on 4-26, you replied on 4-27 and here I am almost a full month later 5-13, just now seeing it. I came back in order to thank you for placing my ad which I always do, and as I scrolled through the comments in order to leave a comment I spotted my previous comment and thus your answer.
I’m not trying to be difficult, really am trying to understand and learn
Thanks
Sandy
as always welcome mats out, visitors welcomed
Does Google take it into account when the same users go back to the site multiple times?
I personally despise those blogs that make you click on “read more” to go to another page, but I understand why they do it. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m willing to do that to my readers just to lower my bounce rate.
If Google would look at the fact that the same people were visiting the site over and over, even though those people only visit one page, then bounce rates wouldn’t be such an issue for blogs and we wouldn’t be confronted with the annoying “read more” links.
I’ve always considered Entrecard to be bad news from the perspective of a site’s overall bounce rate, and as I’m just getting my main blog Reward Rebelback on its feet, and using EC again (to bring feet thru the door, so to speak) I can really see how the bounce rate has shot up.
So many people come into the world of blogs and IM — expecting automation and easy scripts will take care of the work — only to discover they need to become proficient in all kinds of complex specialties! I’m one of them!
Measuring bounce rate makes things complicated but it will give us an analysis on how our blogs or websites perform. But how about if the site have contextual advertising on it? then it will be natural for a page to have a high bounce rate if a big percentage of visitors click the ads because they will be delivered to an outside page.
So I conclude that if the site have low bounce rate, the CTR will become poor because the visitors stay longer in the site.
Bounce rate is the first thing I check when scrutinizing analytics, and believe you me, Google (and the others…..) have been paying heed to them for a long time already. Non-relevant pages will have a high bounce rate, and their algorithm is all about relevance……
This is great stuff for me.
Thank you for sharing them.
See you around.
It makes sense that they would implement something of the sort. At the end of the day in order for them to stay number one they need to offer their users the best results. Bounce rate in most instances is a marker of the quality of relevance of the website. As a website owner bounce rate is an important factor towards success.
This is a good article.
I would think a bounce rate of 20% would be ideal.
But, not sure, how many website have achieved these.
Thanks
Yes, bounce rate is a very good parameter to track and work on reducing the same to be under 20%.
But, I am not sure, how many sites have achieved the same..
Thanks
I came across this blog looking for information about the bounce rate, andhere is my fresh experience. Until recently, on my site with flash games, bounce rate was about 9%. For keywords that I target, I have ranked in the top of the first page, and maybe fall or climb up just one position from time to time, without major changes. Approximately 2 weeks ago, I added the link right below each game on my site. From that moment my bounce rate has increased to 24%, and a couple days ago I fell down 5 position in search results for the main keyword. So this is just my first expiriance with this. No change in backlinks, seo or content. Sorry for my english
thanks for your tips and suggestion after a long time i read this type of article. thanks again.
My bounce rate varies from 40% to 80%. I am doing my best to keep it low. But it is up to the visitors to decide.