What is a Good Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?
First of all, what does your bounce rate mean? The bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a particular page and then leave the website from that very same page. For instance, if I search for “maine seo”, land on my blog, decide that it wasn’t what I was looking for, and then go back and try my search again…that would count as apart of my bounce rate. At the same time, if I searched the very same query, find this blog, find what I’m looking for by reading a post or two, then leave…that again would count towards by bounce rate.
For this reason, bounce rates can be misleading. A person could spend 5 seconds or 5 minutes on the page before “bouncing”, you don’t know. They could very well have found what they’re looking for and decided to call you or email you. Google Analytics goals, in this case, wouldn’t help with this disconnect. Only by asking your customer with something like “How did you find us?” would you know they actually ever visited your site.
But I digress…the only additional information Google provides if you drill down into the bounce rate section is the bounce rate per day:
If you go into the Content section, you can see the bounce rate for individual pages. Typically, the pages with the most pageviews (or the top content pages) will also have the highest bounce rate. You can also see that the % Exiting is often similar to the bounce rate:
So, what’s a good bounce rate? It really depends on your industry. My blog has almost an 80% bounce rate. This is fairly typical for both my industry and for blogs in general. With blogs, searchers will read a post or check out the homepage and then move on – hence the higher rate.
In particular, I’ve notice that websites for hotels, inns, and motels tend to have a low bounce rate – something in the 30% range, since people searching for hotels know specifically what they’re looking for when they click on the result. Furthermore, when you’re perusing a hotel’s site, you want to check out more than one page. At a minimum, that includes something that resembles amenities and rates pages.
When are you in trouble? In general, the bounce rate isn’t the most important stat to pay attention to. But there a few things you should keep your eye on, including:
- If your bounce rate increases or decreases dramatically. Did you change something for the better – or worse?
- If the bounce rate on one particular page is significantly higher or lower. This might cause you to change that page (for a higher-than-average rate), or other pages on the site to replicate it (for a lower-than-average rate).
- If the % exiting far exceeds the bounce rate. This means that people have visited more than one page on the site, but something is causing them to leave the site from this point. Should they be?
Your bounce rate is heavily dependent on both your industry and your site architecture. But if you bare the above in mind, you can effectively manage it.
Nicki Hicks
Bouncing is what Tiggers do best
Tags: Bounce Rate, Google Analytics
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
The key point is – How to reduce bounce rate? do I have to refer the visitors to other articles?
My blog’s bounce rate is on average of 65%, 2.2 minutes, 2.3 visited pages and I am concerned.
I would like that visitors will read at least 3 articles before leaving.
The blog receives targeted traffic and I really do not understand the reason for leaving after 2-3 pages, when most of the useful info can be reached after reading 3-4 artciles.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Ziv,
That’s the tough part. While I would argue that, for a blog, those stats are pretty good; it sounds like you’d really like to get that bounce rate down.
Experimenting is the best way. Change one thing at a time – your call to action, your posts, etc. See which posts have the lowest bounce rate and work around/write more on those topics.
September 7th, 2009 at 4:12 am
This is the best explaination that i have come across for explaining a high bounce rate. As i run a blog its very reassuring to know that a high bounce rate of 80% is normal for this industry.
I read a warning that concentrating on improvement can lead to gimmicks that drive away returning visitors who are the people we should be retaining.
Another reassuring factor is to look at different pages, my home page has a bounce rate of only 44% which i am very pleased about as it means i am keeping the people that i am actively trying to stay on the site.
The only change i have made is with regard to usability putting lines in the category list makes them more readable.
However, i will look at high bounce pages which answer the search term query and having got the info they go away, but i will see if i can add some more info for them to look at.
I use benchmarls and notice that while other sites have a bounce rate of only 47% they read 3.4 pages compared to only 2 of mine. However, my visitors stay on site slightly longer which suggests my pages are being read and theirs are not.
Its the old saying there are lies, damn lies, and statistics!
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:04 pm
i’m a relatively new blogger. i have been blogging for nearly six months. now that i think about it, though I appreciate this type of information and I agree with the first half of this article.
the truth is we can never say what causes a high bounce rate. yes i believe it can fall into the categories outlined here, but you can’t say what the precise or exact reason someone exits a site, or how long they were on the site before leaving. this has been a source of great frustration for me when all I have to rely on is speculation based on percentages. you’re trying to figure out something when you don’t have any verbal feedback, which is more exact.
lots of people get on the internet at their place of employment; from this vantage point i think its probable a high bounce rate from time to time can be attributed to `the boss is coming’ type of thing. so they get out of a site before the boss can see it. maybe the telephone rang or something else happened that took them away from their desk, and they had to leave. a high bounce rate may not necessarily reflect the content is bad or the overall blog is not interesting.
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Thanks a lot for the info! I have a 68% bounce rate for http://OurIslamic.com (My first website ever).
February 20th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for the helpful explanation.
We have a “personality” website we post to daily, mostly for fun and to keep our humor writing, cartooning, and photo skills in shape. Topics range across the spectrum of whatever we found interesting that day. Still, it’s interesting to see what topics and medium were most compelling. And no surprise, looking at bounce rate shows that topics that are part of a thematic thread or are completely unique to our site have the lowest bounce rate.
For instance, I crocheted a hat last week in honor of Alexandre Bilodeau’s Olympic gold medal for Canada and blogged on it, titling it “In Honor of Gold, I’m Making A Bobbled Bilodeau.” Three days later, we posted “Bobbled Bilodeau Update,” and guess what? A bounce rate of zero.
Thanks again for enlightening!
Ciao, Kathy
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Thanks for you explaination, I have a small, just launched business directory in Tasmania, Australia and it is interesting to compare the bounce rate, average time on page and exit rates, my home page has an average 17% Bounce rate, short time on page and then many other pages views, which would suggest people liked my site and went off to explore other pages.
I also have pages for the many towns and cities in Tasmania, these pages typically have a higher bounce rate (75%) longer time on page (3-4 minutes) and a higher exit rate (40-60%) this would suggest that people found what they wanted, stayed long enough to read the content (I can read these pages in 3-4 mins) and then left.
I have spent a lot of time on my Analytics page, reading the stats and looking at blog pages like this one, when you put yourself in your site visitors shoes, or ask friends to look at your site the numbers start to make more sense.
Thanks again for your information
Cheers
John
May 7th, 2010 at 1:29 am
In google analytics, there are some pages on my site with high page views and a bounce rate of around 50%. From what I understand, if they have a bounce rate at all that means someone is entering my site on those pages. But those pages don’t come up in google searches at all even if you copy the entire title tag of the page and do a search on it (many of the pages of the site have the same title tags). The only way to get them to come up at all is do a search on a significantly long string of text from the page, which is something that nobody would do. Also these pages aren’t linked from any adword ads. How are people entering my site on these pages?
May 7th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Hi Dan,
Those pages are (hopefully) linked from other places on your website. If that’s the case, you’re having indexing issues and Google isn’t finding the pages. If you want them found, look into creating a better linking strategy to get them indexed. If you don’t want them found, be sure to add them to your robots.txt file.
If it’s not through links from other pages, other websites are linking to those pages. I highly doubt people are directly typing in the URL (unless they’re special promotional pages you’ve put up).
Best,
Nicki