Tracking metrics from analytics can often provide valuable insights into which segments of the site are performing well and which need improvement and repair. One of the parameters that perhaps carries the most doubts is the bounce rate . What exactly does bounce rate mean and does it affect rankings?

What is bounce rate ?

Bounce rate is the percentage of site visits with engagement only on that one page that was visited. This means that Google Analytics actually tracks the number of visitors who land on a site page and leave it without viewing any other page or engaging with that page in any meaningful way (or at least what Google considers meaningful engagement). A high bounce rate does not necessarily mean that you need to improve the quality of your site. The site should be designed and designed in such a way as to provide satisfactory answers to the user’s queries , and not so that the bounce rate is as low as possible.

The bounce rate of a page is not a measure of how much time a user spends on that page. Much of the confusion stems from this distinction. You can have a great, attractive page and a high bounce rate on it because it does not measure the time spent on the site (that is, on the specific page). For example, a high bounce rate on a sales landing page is basically inevitable. A high bounce rate can certainly be expected for quality informative pages where users can find what they are looking for and then move on. So optimizing for a lower bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean you’re improving the quality of your site or helping to make it more useful for your visitors.

Does bounce rate affect ranking?

Does Google use the bounce rate of your site and does the bounce rate affect the ranking? The short answer is NO! IT DOESN’T AFFECT!

On June 12, 2020, Google ‘s John Mueller confirmed that Google does not use bounce rate as a ranking factor. “ I think there’s a bit of a misconception here that we look at things like bounce rate in analytics when it comes to ranking sites, and that’s definitely not the case. ”

And this is certainly a true statement. Bounce rate is not a direct ranking factor. However, in many cases, it can be an indicator that something on the site is not good, as soon as users do not interact with the content of the site after visiting one page.

However , bounce rates vary widely across different industries and different sections of the site. According to one study, blogs have a bounce rate of 70-90%, sites that present specific content around 40-60%, and websites with services only 10-30%. It would not make sense for Google to penalize certain types of sites or pages based on bounce rate if the purpose of the page is not to guide the user through the rest of the site.

In addition, many sites do not use Google analytics, so in their case the bounce rate is not available as information to Google . Not only are there sites that don’t use any kind of analytics tools, but of those that do, not all of them use Google Analytics. Even with analytics that Google can track, it’s difficult to fully determine what they actually mean because every situation and site is different.

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