• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Bounce Rate – How to Audit Bounce Rate?

Reading Time: 3 mins. Posted on July 22, 2019, last updated on November 6, 2019 .

When someone views a webpage and goes away without any other page view is a bounce. Expressing it in terms of percentage is bounce rate.

Bounce Rate – How to Audit Bounce Rate?

A general perception about bounce rate is – higher is bad and lower is good.

It’s a total myth.

A high bounce rate is terrible and low being good can vary from a niche to the kind of site, the type of traffic source, and many other such parameters.

So, let’s start with Google Analytics’ definition of bounce rate first.

The Definition of Bounce Rate

When someone visits a website or webpage and goes away without any other page view is termed as a bounce. Expressing it in terms of percentage is bounce rate.

Google’s Calculation for Bounce Rate is as follow:

Bounce Rate of a page = Total number of bounces on a page / Total number of visits on the page.

One can track the bounce rate of a single webpage or the site as a whole.

There are speculations as to whether Google uses bounce rate as a ranking factor or not. Even if it does, then it doesn’t use the bounce rate that we see in Google Analytics for sure. Here are my couple of articles to help you track Real Bounce Rate in Google Analytics Via Tag Manager or Directly changing the Google Analytics Code.

Why Should I Care about User Bounce?

First thing first, bounce rate helps identify how visitors interact with the website. Do they love the site or the content or not. It helps decide whether it’s the design elements or the content pushing visitors away.

The bottom line is it tells you what’s working and what needs tweaking.

Let’s assume you run an eCommerce website with an integrated blog in it.

Let’s say your scenario is such that the eCommerce pages are driving highly targetted traffic where people will view more than one page. Whereas, the blog pages may show a higher bounce rate due to Google’s highly targeted search traffic to the content pages.

So are blog pages bad?

The answer is NO.

It is driving traffic for related search terms in Google. So if the traffic has a high bounce rate means, it may not be flowing from the blog pages to the eCommerce site the way it should be.

So it means either one of the two scenarios:

  1. Your eCommerce products aren’t related to what the user is searching in Google and landing on the blog.
  2. You aren’t showing the correct product to the users at the point when they are reading the blog.

How Much “Bounce Rate” is Good?

Variables like industry, business type, location, gender, type of device, and browsers on which webpages are browsed collectively calculates an average bounce rate. For instance, bounce rates of B2B businesses are high compared to B2C businesses.

Take a look at the chart below, showing average bounce rate across industries:

Bounce Rate Infographic Industry-Wise

View Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

Navigate to Behavior reports in Google Analytics and locate Landing Pages under Site Content.

bounce rate as per landing pages

Here, one can see site-wide average bounce rate and individual landing page wise bounce rate. Furthermore, one can dig deep into All Pages, Content Drilldown, and Exit Pages options in the Site Content section to identify unique bounce rate.

There’s another location of analyzing bounce rate. To do this navigate to Acquisition and locate Channels option under All Traffic.

acquisition all traffic channels bounce rate

Moreover, the bounce rate report is in the Comparision View. A visual illustration of page’s bounce rate with the site’s average bounce rate.

In short, the comparison view compares metrics against a site’s average for that particular metric.

In the example below, we can see the landing page bounce rate percentages as above or below the site’s average bounce rate.

comparison view bounce rate in google analytics

You are Here: Home / Knowledge Base / Bounce Rate – How to Audit Bounce Rate?

About Shabbir Bhimani

Blogging Since 2009. If I can leave my high paying C# job in an MNC in the midst of global financial crisis of 2008, anybody can do it. @BizTips I guide programmers and developers to Start and Grow an Online Business. Read more about me here.

May I help You With ...

Upwork Proposal
Finding Clients
Start a Store
Start a Blog
 

Or Help Yourself ..

Primary Sidebar

About Shabbir Bhimani

Blogging Since 2009. If I can leave my high paying C# job in an MNC in the midst of global financial crisis of 2008, anybody can do it. @BizTips I guide programmers and developers to Start and Grow an Online Business.

Get in touch with me on LinkedIn or read more about me here.

Let me Guide You to Start and Grow your Online Business

Download my
FREE eBook NOW
to win more clients.
And it is not an annoying pop-up either

Additional menu

  • Twitter
  • Linkedin

BizTips

Shabbir Bhimani: Start and Grow an Online Business

  • Freelancers Start Here
  • Start An eCommerce Store
  • Start A Blog
  • About
  • Archive
  • Disclaimer
  • Contact
  • Glossary

2009 - 2023 All my content & images are licensed as Creative Commons.

WebTurtles LLP. LLPIN: AAL-5288. Hosted with Linode.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT