What is Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?

Melanie Wahl - May 23, 2012

THE DEFINITION

Bounce Rate, specifically the Bounce Rate Metric in Google Analytics, is the percentage of single-page visits to total visits of a certain Dimension. For example, say you are looking at your Organic Traffic and sort by search engine. You follow the row across and see that Bing is delivering a 75% Bounce Rate. This means that 75% of the visitors coming from Bing to your website during the date range you have selected are visiting one page and leaving your site. Depending how your Google Analytics account is set up, this may include closing the browser, directly typing in a different site’s URL into their browser’s navigation bar, or clicking on a link to one of your social media sites or off-site blog. This third case is important to note, because unless Google Analytics has been set-up to track these off-site channels as part of the account, a visitor will be considered a Bounce even though they are still interacting with channels your brand controls.

IS A HIGH BOUNCE RATE BAD?
A high Bounce Rate typically indicates that a visitor did not find the page they landed on relevant to their interests or it did not fulfill their drive to click-through on the referring link. This is not always the case. If your blog is being tracked by Google Analytics and a visitor lands on one of your blog posts and the information they seek is clearly available, they may have no further interest in diving deeper into your website. A low Bounce Rate, on the other hand, does not necessarily mean your users are happily engaged with your site. If you pair a low Bounce Rate with a high number of Pageviews and low conversions, your visitors may be frustrated and unable to find what they are looking for even after searching and are leaving your site unfulfilled.

If you are looking for ways to improve your bounce rate, read our blog post: Down about your Bounce Rate? Do these five things to improve it today!

KISSmetrics has an interesting infographic about Bounce Rate that includes an equation, Bounce Rate metrics by industry average, and a number of tips to improve your Bounce Rate.

BOUNCE RATE vs. EXIT RATE (% EXIT)
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits to total visits, whereas Exit Rate (% Exit) is the percentage of site exits that occur. A visitor, who visits your website, loads one page (or blog post) and leaves is considered in both your Bounce Rate and your Exit Rate. A visitor who visits your website, loads one page (or blog post) and continues on to another blog post or another page on your site, is considered in only your Exit Rate.
To view the Exit Pages for your website — the pages where visitors are leaving your site from, go to the Exit Pages report under Content > Site Content > Exit Pages.