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Is bounce rate a ranking factor?

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Scott@KarmaContent

Is bounce rate a ranking factor? I've read various different views on this, some saying yes, some saying no.

It's something I've always been very conscious of, and if it isn't a ranking factor why isn't it? It seems an obvious one to consider. A site that engages visitors must surely be a better quality, more relevant site than one which sees the vast majority of visitors clicking straight off again.
 
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Unless G is tracking your visitors how will it know what the bounce rate is?

Google has all sorts of clever tech that will measure if someone returns to google a few seconds after clicking on a link but if you get all your visitors from alternate source google won't even know they visited your site.

So yes, it may be a ranking signal but only a very tiny one.
 
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Hi Scott.

My view is this:

We can't know for sure, but Google have said that user metrics are a part of the equation (citation needed), so it seems likely that they will use that sort of thing.

I generally assume that they will use any data they have access to.

Now:
As far as I can see, they can't track bounce rate in the literal sense. If someone finds my site in a search result and clicks it, and then immediately "bounces" to say facebook, or just closes their browser or whatever, Google won't know that has happened.

However:
A scenario that Google can track is if the above happens but then the user bounces back to the Google search results. If that happens it seems to me that Google could use that as a signal that the user's query was not entirely answered.

So it's not quite what we would call bounce rate, but it's similar.

In that scenario I think one of three things can happen:

User returns to Google and does same search
User returns to Google and does similar search
User returns to Google and does completely different search

I imagine that Google will take a different meaning from all of those possibilities, and obviously compare your metrics with those of the other sites ranking for that search.

Now, HOW they use those signals is anyones guess, but I think it's a safe assumption that they do, because why wouldn't they.

So my advice to anyone worrying about bounce rate would be:

If a lot of your visitors are bouncing back to Google, fix it.
If your users are bouncing on to other sites, that may not be an SEO problem, although it's potentially a sign that you're doing something wrong, so fix it if you can.

Of course there are examples where a site would be expected to have a high bounce rate, but it's how you compare to your competition that matters!

I'd be interested in other opinions on this though...
 
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Consider as well that Google may have ranked you for something way out in the boondocks that your page isn't even targeting so you will get a high bounce. I've got one page that gets loads of visitors for an irrelevant phrase because of a reference on the page. It has 100% bounce. But it does rank well for the things I am targeting and has a sub 20% bounce.
 
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I'm getting 20% - 25% bounce rate on my own Karma Content site which I'm reasonably happy with, but I have noticed a strong correlation in the past between a rise in social media activity and bounce rate. Obviously it has the potential to send a lot of un-targeted, non-relevant visitors.
 
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But if all that traffic is coming from an SM site Google won't know about it. Your ranking isn't relevant so you could get 100% bounce and it wouldn't make any difference.

So ignore Mr Venkatesh who is talking complete bollox.
 
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Pretty sure it's been confirmed by Google themselves that it isn't, but can't remember where I read it.
 
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If you are using Analytics then you can see the visits from Social sites and so, obviously, Google knows about them.

Bounce rate, number of visitors, time on site, pages visited and all that good stuff in Analytics is used by Google as some of its many ranking factors based on what people can determine from tests and observations. But even if they weren't they are important to you for your business so worth improving.
 
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SBurdett said:
Bounce rate, number of visitors, time on site, pages visited and all that good stuff in Analytics is used by Google as some of its many ranking factors based on what people can determine from tests and observations.
Click to expand...

It seems fairly unlikely that Google would use the information they get from sites that carry an analytics code to help determine where it should rank among all the sites that don't use analytics.
And if they do, I hope they continue to do so.
 
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Yeh I don't believe that they use Analytics data as a ranking factor, I think this would be unethical, and potentially illegal - since presumably it is your data, not theirs... Although I haven't read the entirety of the Ts & Cs, so I don't know for sure.

Anyway, as has been pointed out, not everyone uses Analytics, which means Google only has that data available for a portion of websites. Therefore I can't see that it would be a very helpful ranking factor anyway!

On the other hand:

I do suspect that they may use more general trending data taken anonymously from Analytics to help inform improvements to the algorithm and refining certain aspects...

Who knows.
 
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The answer is simple and plain "NO"! Bounce rate is not and can not be a ranking factor. Let me explore a bit. The official definition of Bounce rate on Google analytics reads

"Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page)."

Now let me take an example of yahoo answer. We search many questions in Google and we land on Yahoo answer for many times. We get the answer straight. Do we shuffle on any other page or interact with page? No! That means we bounced from Yahoo answer. Does it prove Yahoo Answer is bad website? Again the answer is "no" because we got the bit of information which we are searching. So Google follow the same theory and they also don't label a website bad or good based on bounce rate. It has been said many times that you decide the bounce rate based on niche between your avg. time on site and this so called bounce rate.

Now come to second point. If anyone goes on website through search and if he comes back to search (which is known as piggy-back) that will affect the ranking. Here the thing is, searcher comes to your website in hope of finding something and he didn't get that so he/she goes back to search again. And that obviously prove the point that website is not offering what it is claiming.
 
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altonroot said:
Now come to second point. If anyone goes on website through search and if he comes back to search (which is known as piggy-back) that will affect the ranking. Here the thing is, searcher comes to your website in hope of finding something and he didn't get that so he/she goes back to search again. And that obviously prove the point that website is not offering what it is claiming.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. One might be price checking, in which case the site might be delivering up exactly what is required, i.e. a clearly displayed price...
 
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WeblinkPlus said:
Not necessarily. One might be price checking, in which case the site might be delivering up exactly what is required, i.e. a clearly displayed price...
Click to expand...
Agree with your point. That could be the reason why Google and we SEOs also categorize the search queries like informational, transactional local etc. And I am sure Google has little different methods to generate SERPs for different types of queries.

And don't forget the microdata which Google is pushing for prices in SERP itself can help a lot!
 
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Bounce Rate does affect your google ranking and we have tried and tested this theory ourselves!

We setup a website and alternated different website designs to influence the bounce rate

Some had higher bounce rates than others and the ranking was directly affected as a result

However breaking it down what we realised was that the bounce rate on its own individual merit was not the factor affecting ranking.

It was the bounce rate tied to the source keyword

For example if your keyword is "shoes" and the bounce rate is disproportionately high then it affects your SERP as google interprets the site as not relevant / not user friendly

Where as a lower bounce rate on the same level of traffic has a higher relevance and bore some impact on the position within the search engines
 
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apologies wrote it on my phone so couldn't go into too much detail

check this out below

Your goal should be that when a visitor lands on your page, the content answers all of their needs, encouraging their next action to remain with you. If your content does not encourage them to remain with you, they will leave. The search engines can get a sense of this by watching the dwell time. The time between when a user clicks on our search result and when they come back from your website tells a potential story. A minute or two is good as it can easily indicate the visitor consumed your content. Less than a couple of seconds can be viewed as a poor result.
Dwell time, in a sense, is an amalgam of bounce rate and time-on-site metrics – it measures how long it takes for someone to return to a SERP after clicking on a result (and it can be measured directly from the search engine’s own data).

Google hasn’t been quite so transparent, but there’s one piece of evidence that suggests strongly to me that they use dwell time as well (or something very similar). Last year, Google tested a feature where, if you clicked a listing and then quickly came back to the SERP (i.e. your dwell time was very low), you would get the option to block that site:

so dwell time is another metric used which is simply another term for bounce rate as a lower dell time equates to a higher bounce rate
 
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Dwell time only makes sense if someone lands on a page from a search. I just checked the stats on one of my sites and less than 20% of the visitors arrived via a search engine.
 
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Google wants to provide the best quality and most relevant content to it's searchers. A well-structured and easy to navigate website will make it simple for it's visitors to browse and engage with the content, therefore bounce rate will be low. As Google's aim is to ensure that the searcher is provided with the most appropriate websites related to their queries it make complete sense for this to be a factor. As stated above we cannot know for certain (as with any factor) though logic would suggest in order to provide the best possible results you need to ensure that the content is being engaged with.
 
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In this instance it is somewhat assumed that Google would have a benchmark comparison, other Q and A websites are likely to also have a high bounce rate and those comparatively you're website performance would be similar to the competing sites in the search results.

In order to engage your visitors why not link to other 'age-related' or 'obama-related' questions and answers that relate to their topic.
 
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If it is a ranking signal it's only a teeny tiny one. Not one worth fretting over.

However a high bounce rate may indicate your site isn't optimised for your visitors - that's of much more concern.
 
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theres a good video on this, can't post links but search: 'matthew woodward 3 new ranking factors'
They track u with far more than just analytics.
 
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True bounce rate might be a useful metric, along with many other engagement metrics. But the bounce rate you see on Google Analytics is a terrible metric. It doesn't mean what you think it means, or what it implies. Read up on exactly how its calculated and you'll see why its so weak, and so noisy, and so easy to manipulate.
Of course Google doesn't use it as a ranking factor. Thats just fake news, as someone once said.
 
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Erminoli said:
Google uses more than 200 ranking factors and you seriously think the bounce rate isn't one of them?
Click to expand...
Did you read the seoroundtable article? Google says it's not a ranking signal.
 
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fisicx said:
Did you read the seoroundtable article? Google says it's not a ranking signal.
Click to expand...

They say it's not a good ranking signal. Doesn't mean it is not a ranking signal.

Google is rewarding good content and the bounce rate is ONE of MANY indicators for it. It ain't the #1 signal, it's not even among the top 10, but that doesn't mean it's completely irrelevant.
 
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Forget looking at your site's overall bounce rate – averages tell you absolutely nothing. Unless you've got a one-page/landing page of course.

Drill down to see which particular pages have a high bounce rate. Then work out which ones are important for driving revenue/leads/whatever your website is meant to do. Then focus on fixing those. It may be something technical, eg your page doesn't work well on mobile. That's fairly easy to fix. If you can't see anything technical, that's when it gets more 'interesting' and you'll need to do stuff like analyse the copy/layout/usability. Maybe run A/B testing and/or user testing.

And if your Google Analytics setup doesn't filter out bots and hits from you/your developer/your proud mum, there's no point looking at your bounce rate anyway.

Fix your data first, drill down, and fix your bounce rate for your visitors rather than for Google.
 
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Hello,

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular site who navigate or “bounce” away after only viewing that individual webpage. Usually, the term ‘bounce rate’ has a negative connotation associated with it. People think that if a visitor only visits one page and then leaves, it’s bad for business. Their logic isn’t that flawed, either. After all, a high bounce rate would indicate that a site does not have the high-quality, relevant content Google wants out of its top ranked sites.
 
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Jamie Hennings said:
After all, a high bounce rate would indicate that a site does not have the high-quality, relevant content Google wants out of its top ranked sites.
Click to expand...
100% wrong. If the landing page has the perfect answer then people will visit, get the info they want and leave. That doesn't mean the content is wrong, on the contrary, it means the page is perfect.
 
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