Bounce Rate
-
Howdy Mozzers
Does anyone know if the 'average time on site' in Google analytics is calculated with bounce rate included?
For example if you have a 50% bounce rate and your average time on site is 2 minutes the actual time would be 4 minutes as the 50% bounce rate time is classed as 0.
I hope that is clear!
Cheers
-
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a certain page or site who only visited one page and then left the site. It's not related to the amount of time spent on a site. The amount of time spent on a site is the average time overall for time spent on the site before leaving. Hope that helps.
-
Going back a step, "Average Time On Site' in my opinion, is not a relevant statistic any more as internet connection speed increases.
With dial up connection the customer paid per minute on-line. Now with flat rates for broadband people leave pages open when they step away from their computers - I've had pages open at the office literally for days! That would really muck up anyone's stats. (That's not why I do it though)
-
There is an easy way to fix this. Create a custom advanced segment to only include visits with pageviews > 1. This will allow you to see avg time on site for all visitors excluding bounces.
-
I think it could massively confuse things if they didn't take it into account. Should those page views be deleted as well then? Do they not count as unique visitors or visitors at all?
Don;t get me wrong, I see where you are coming from, but the completely objective data is what makes GA so valuable.
-
It's a shame Google are counting this. I see their reasons though I believe. Bounces did originally want to view your site, so they are a visitor in theory. It does skew the data massively however
-
Yep good answer cheers.
Conclusion - Totally inaccurate!
-
-
There is some great info about this on this link: https://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=7f1a0537ed9f8fe8&hl=en
Rather than me paraphrasing and messing it up or copying/plagiarizing their answer, I'll just point you in the right direction.
-
Can you provide a link to the horses mouth?
-
Average time on site includes bounces (counted as 0 seconds) in the calculations.
See http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/01/standard-metrics-revisited-time-on-page-and-time-on-site.html
-
Agreed! Very misleading and inaccurate if it is included.
-
Haha don't worry your safe...for now!
Like all thing its should be used as a relative measure but it can be quite misleading especially for an obsessed client who doesn't know the real meaning of bounce rate, hence the reason for my question so I can explain it but the time on site is also misleading if the bounce rate is included.
-
I'm pretty sure that bounced traffic isn't calculated in the average time on site, Analytics put 0 because it can't calculate the time on site unless a visitor hit a second page within the same Analytics code (site). I'm not 100% sure but that would be really irrelevant to include bounced traffic to this metric.
-
Yeah, I'm assuming that from Googles view of analytics is post search, thus time after search...
I might be completely wrong (don't sue, kill or hurt me!), however I couldn't find a better answer from a more reputable source!
-
Hmm I guess it could be clearer and be labelled as 'avg. time on site' rather than 'time after search' which I assume your referring to?
-
I've always believed that the time on site is a global average of all visitors. Never thought to question myself until now though. Aran seems to have found the answer. Thanks
-
Hi, your question led me on an interesting trip though Google help, revisiting the basics of analytics.
Google define the Bounce Rate as:
"Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page" - Google Webmaster Help http://bit.ly/gPPNPj - This makes me think of single page sites, do they have 100% bounce rate?
Heres a look at how Google Analytics performs it calculations. http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77234
What I took from this is that all visitor times are taken and averaged, bounce or not.
Cheers
Aran
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Two Tracking for Banners - Internal Promotion & Event Tracking -Any Impact on Analytic Figure or Bounce Rate?
Hi All, I have implemented Internal Promotion - https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/enhanced-ecommerce#promo-clicks for my ecommerce site on homepage banners. Along with this I did event tracking for Banner click. So any negative impact of bounce rate or other reports? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Arnold30 -
Do Lot of Tracking via Tag manager Increase Bounce Rate?
Hello Expert, I am doing lots of tracking for my ecommerce site but I am not sure reason for increase in bounce rate as my traffic also increase but I want to make sure that my tracking not affecting my bounce rate. I do tracking via page views, events, custom html, etc so for all the applicable tags Non-Interaction Hit - I set "True" so I am right here? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dsouzac0 -
Bounce Rate: what is it EXACTLY?
Hi everyone: we all know the term 'Bounce Rate'. I'd like to think i have a good idea of what BR is....but some things are not really clear to me. Time to call in the experts. Question #1: What EXACTLY will stop Google from considering the visit as a bounce? As discussed not too long ago in this topic https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/will-this-fix-my-bounce-rate
Reporting & Analytics | | BasKierkels
Ruben wrote: "..what it basically means is that someone clicks on your SERP, and then clicks back to google? But, it doesn't matter if they spent 10 minutes on your page or 10 seconds" Jessica Conflitti wrote a reply in which she basically said that it might be a good idea to have visitors click to a different page OR a PDF-file. That's where my confusion has been for some time now: Clicking on a PDF-document, an image in the page that opens with Fancybox, a link to a different domain? Or can it only be a different URL on the same domain? The way i would expect it to be:
Pages contain the GA-tracking code. So am i right by thinking that Google needs to have the same GA-tracking code to be loaded twice? Because only at that point will they have two datapoints. And only then will they be able to tell that the visitor hasn't left. By clicking a PDF-document - as described by Jessica - you wouldn't load the GA-code twice. So I would expect that clicking a PDF does not make a difference for the BR. Don't get me wrong: i like the article but it is this detail that throws me off. IF Google can read or capture these clicks, what other elements can be used to reduce bounce rate? Clicking on a YouTube-video embedded in the page? I'm asking this because i want to get this right. Question #2: how much weight does BR have on Time on Page, Engagement, etc? We know Google is taking a lot of things into consideration when calculating the value of a URL or domain. So how much should we care for BR if we know the Time on Page is good and a large percentage of people are frequently returning? How about your experiences or knowledge on that? Really looking forward to your replies and help on clearing this topic for me. And perhaps some other readers as well! Bas0 -
Bounce Rates: Leaving my domain.com/blog to shop on mydomain.com counts as bounce rate?
Hello! I have a kind of difficult question. On my main domain i have: Store: mydomain.com and wordpress blog on mydomain.com/blog If I have a link to a specific product on my blog and user goes to the product on the store, will bounce rate increase or as it's the same domain will be like a new page view? Different CMS's and blog is on a different analytics account than the store. I hope i could explain myself! Thank you
Reporting & Analytics | | prozis0 -
Can a 100% bounce rate page hurt whole website?
Hello, So with trying to figure out what I can do to better my website, I noticed a post on here that mentioned bounce rates. So I went to my Google analytics pages and listed my bounce rates. My average is 44% But I have a picture page that is 100% and a contact page that is 80% Can pages like this cause an algo penalty that could hurt a whole site? Thank you for your valuable insights
Reporting & Analytics | | Berner0 -
Reach local driving up bounce rate...
Hi all! I have a new client that I did a website for. After a month, looking at the analytics, it shows that while the site visits from reach local is more than the organic google, the reachlocal traffic is bouncing, causing the overall website bounce rate to skyrocket. Organic bounce rate is 47.62% and the reachlocal is at 84.25% driving the overall bounce rate to 68! Duration of the reachlocal traffic is at :56 vs 3:41 for organic. (SEE ATTACHED IMAGE) I'm guessing this all means that the reachlocal traffic is obviously not quality, so does that mean they are targeting non-relevant keywords? I don't have any experience dealing with reachlocal. Should I recommend my client to drop it? And if so, how to stop that traffic from coming to the site? I'm sure this is an easy one for you pros! Thanks! ~BB MUW959h.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | BBuck0 -
Does GWT "Fetch as Google Bot" feature affect crawl rate?
Hello Mozians, I have noticed many people saying using GWT fetch as GoogleBot can affect your crawl rate in future, if used regularly. Though, i am not very sure if this is true or just another stale SEO myth. As currently GWT provides a limit of 500 URLs to fetch every month. I hope my doubts will be cleared by the Moz community experts. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pushkar630 -
Why do I have a lot of direct traffic from MSN and Yahoo with 100% bounce rate?
For MSN I have about 8000 hits of one page and a 100% bounce rate. In the last month I have about 400 hits from Yahoo with a 100% bounce rate. Msn is all different pages, while Yahoo is all the home page. What would cause this?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0