Bounce Rate - an Issue?

1. 89

   Marisa Wrightposted 13 years ago

   I confess I'm lazy when it comes to Analytics, but I've been looking at it more closely with the recent surge in traffic.   I notice my bounce rate is horrific - over 80%.  I've always been confused what it meant, but Analytics say it's:
   
   "the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page"
   
   Now my bounce rate makes sense.  For instance, I only have one Hub about neck and back pain, which has a bounce rate of 100%.  That's because visitors aren't going to visit any of my other Hubs next - they're going to click on a related Hub by someone else.  When HubPages was one big site, that counted as the same site so my bounce rate was low:  now it counts as a separate site so my bounce rate has gone through the roof!
   
   They also say:
   
   "Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors"
   
   Now, if they're telling us to use it to measure visit quality, you can bet they're using it to measure visit quality! So is my bounce rate going to attract a Google slap? 
   
   My bounce rate is probably not as bad as some, because I do have some major groups of Hubs where I dominate the topic on HubPages - look at the "related Hubs" on some of my dance Hubs, and they're almost all written by me.  So that must be reducing my average bounce rate a bit.  But people who don't have any major speciality could be in real trouble - could that be a clue to some of the people who haven't recovered?
   
   Just speculating here.

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   1. 60

      Fiction Tellerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      It could.  Nobody knows exactly how Google uses the bounce rate. There's a lot of speculation, but sites were pandalized with 40% bounce rates, so it's not just bounce rate. The signal by itself has been referred to as a "noisy" one by Google because what lies behind bouncing behavior is too complicated to gauge simply from the numbers we see in Analytics.
      
      I think they use it somehow, but who knows how?

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2. 60

   Mark Ewbieposted 13 years ago

   It worries me as well.  As does time on the page.
   
   I am trying to make my groups better, tighter and more appropriate for a searcher to choose another page to read.
   
   But there are a lot of distractions on a HubPage.

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3. 98

   Susana Sposted 13 years ago

   I've noticed that many websites split their articles up so that they run over 2 or more pages - I assume to reduce bounce rate. This might be an option to try for hubs, but as fiction teller says bounce is complicated. If someone finds their answer on the page then they'll bounce so it's not necessarily a measure of a poor page. But who knows how google assesses it?
   
   I sense that time on page is more important than bounce rate. Most of my hubs have long time on page stats (5 mins or thereabouts) but when I went through my analytics the other day I saw that a few of my hubs had very low time on page (like less than 30 seconds)so I unpublished them. They are mostly my crappy ones with very few visitors so it was no major loss.
   
   Will have to see if this has helped in the next month or so.

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   1. 89

      Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Good point.

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4. 60

   Mark Ewbieposted 13 years ago

   Unfortunately most of my hubs are crappy ones with high bounce, low time.
   
   If I deleted them I wouldn't have much left.
   
   I need a graphic to put on each one that is so awe inspiring or pornographic the searcher looks at it for a few seconds.

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5. 69

   brakel2posted 13 years ago

   My bounce rate is also high. I don't really understand why. Even our CEO paid a visit per GA, and his stay was very brief. Does anyone get visits from him? Visitor time on site is also brief.

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6. 84

   habeeposted 13 years ago

   I have a high bounce rate on HP, but I have high traffic. On one of my sites, my bounce rate is super great, like 3%, but traffic and CTR are very low.

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7. 77

   jimmythejockposted 13 years ago

   I have heard that in some cases a high bounce rate can be a good thing simply because the reader has bounced from your page to another by clicking on an ad.
   not being an expert though I cannot say if this is true.....jimmy

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   1. 84

      habeeposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hmm...that actually kinda makes sense!

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   2. 60

      Jason Menayanposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, that is true. Clicking on an ad counts as a bounce.
      
      Traffic from search engines tends to have a very high bounce rate (my bounce rate on my Hubs hovers around 92-94%, and I have nice traffic), especially if your Hub answers the question the searcher was looking to have answered; direct traffic tends to have a lower bounce rate, since there's more browsing.

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8. 73

   David 470posted 13 years ago

   My bounce rate is also high above 80% or something according to Google Analytics. Hopefully that is not going to hurt us.

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