What Is Bounce Rate, and Does It Matter in 2023?
Edited by Emilie Martin
Ah, bounce rate. It’s a metric that has been a part of our lives as digital marketers for nearly two decades, dating back to the pre-Universal Analytics days of GA Classic. It has caused an understandable degree of confusion and/or frustration for most users of Google Analytics, at one time or another: Why is it so high? Why is it close to 0%? Why did it drop or spike suddenly? Is my bounce rate good? Do I care about bounce rate?
In this article, we’re going to discuss how bounce rate has evolved over the years, particularly with the migration from Universal Analytics to GA4.
How was bounce rate defined in Universal Analytics?
Bounce rate in Universal Analytics (UA) was a metric used to determine the percentage of single-page sessions on your website. In other words, in UA, bounce rate was used to measure instances where a user lands on a page of your website and then leaves without performing any other action or navigating to another page on your site.
If you were to create an equation to illustrate bounce rate in UA, it would look like this:
Bounce Rate = (Single-Page Sessions / Total Number of Sessions) ×100
In Universal Analytics, given its definition, bounce rate also has a secondary purpose as a debugging metric. An unnaturally high or low bounce rate (think 100% or 0%) can tell you that there is an issue with your GA tag implementation.
A bounce rate of 0% generally indicates a duplicate tracking issue. If you have two GA tags placed on a single page, GA will mistakenly think that two pageviews have occurred, when in reality, it was only one. Since a ‘bounce’ is defined as a single pageview session, firing two pageviews on a URL will automatically result in a 0% bounce rate for the page.
A bounce rate at or close to 100% often indicates an issue with your page itself. A high bounce rate indicates that users may not be able to get where they want to go, elsewhere on your site.
How is bounce rate defined in GA4?
Now that we’ve established how Universal Analytics defined bounce rate let’s turn that idea completely on its head. On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics stopped processing data for non-360 customers. UA has been replaced by GA4. In GA4, bounce rate has an entirely different definition. As a result, bounce rates for your website can be quite different in GA4, compared to what they were in UA.
To fully understand the Google Analytics 4 definition of bounce rate, it is important to review the concept of an engaged session, which has been introduced for GA4. Google defines an engaged session as:
A session that lasts longer than 10 seconds,
has a conversion event,
or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.
If any of these criteria are met, a session will be considered ‘engaged’. Bounce rate in GA4 is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged.
Using this concept of an ‘engaged’ session, Google has created a new metric called engagement rate. Engagement rate aims to measure the percentage of users you visit your site
Engagement rate is defined as:
GA4 Engagement Rate = (Engaged Sessions / Total Number of Sessions) ×100
Bounce rate in GA4 is simply the inverse of engagement rate:
GA4 Bounce Rate = (NON-Engaged Sessions / Total Number of Sessions) ×100
In GA4, engagement rate, and bounce rate are exact opposites of each other. When you’re optimizing your website, you want your engagement rate to go up, and your bounce rate to go down. The metrics will always move in equal magnitude and opposite directions.
Why did Google change the definition of bounce rate in GA4?
GA4 more accurately measures modern web behavior than its predecessor, Universal Analytics. Web design has changed in many ways since bounce rate was first introduced around 2007, and so has the idea of what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ website visit. By creating an engagement rate, and repurposing bounce rate as its direct counterpart, Google is better able to classify ‘successful’ or ‘engaged’ sessions on the modern internet.
Here’s an example: If you have a landing page with a video, some content, and a phone number call-to-action at the bottom, a visitor can become a customer all without visiting another page on your site. They could watch the video, read all of the content, and click the phone number to call you, all while being considered a ‘bounce’ by Universal Analytics. If every person to view this page completed this same journey, your bounce rate would still be 100% in Universal Analytics. Not a great measurement of how your audience engages with your content.
When GA4 was first launched, Google actually decided to remove bounce rate from its reporting capabilities entirely. To me, this illustrates that bounce rate still does have value from a KPI tracking standpoint, even if it is no longer a unique metric. Google likely took reporting continuity into account as well, in its decision to reintroduce bounce rate into GA4.
It is now the inverse of a new metric, engagement rate, but can still serve as an interesting data point in your user engagement reports and dashboards. However, keep in mind that the definition of bounce rate is completely different than it was in UA, and your data will look different. Users can continue reporting on a metric called ‘bounce rate’, in GA4, though the definition is completely different compared to UA.
How can you view your bounce rate in GA4?
Bounce rate can now be viewed in a number of ways within GA4.
View bounce rates within GA4 Reports
Bounce rate can be added to GA4 reports, such as the Landing Page screen within the Engagement dropdown. GA4 users will need at least ‘Editor’ permissions to modify these reports, and add bounce rate. In the upper right-hand corner of a report, click the ‘Customize report’ pencil icon to modify the report.
From there, you can add metrics to the table, including bounce rate.
Bounce rate is not viewable in Overview reports. To add it to your data in the Reports section of GA4, you will need to edit a ‘detail’ report. These are the screens with tables at the bottom, such as ‘Landing Page’ or ‘Traffic Acquisition’. Bounce rate can be added to the screens, using the steps above.
View bounce rate within GA4 Explore
Bounce rate can also be added to Explorations, such as in the example below.
Viewing GA4 Bounce Rate in Moz Pro
Using the GA4 connector in Moz Pro, you can view traffic, as well as bounce rate, for your site. This allows you to pull in KPIs directly from GA4, and view them for each landing page.
A helpful feature about connecting your Moz Pro account to GA4 — your historical data from UA will still be there. In the GA4 web interface, you’ll only be able to see traffic data from the start of your account. Moz Pro will pick up your GA data where UA left off, while providing you with landing page-level traffic and engagement stats.
What is considered a good bounce rate in GA4?
Using the old Universal Analytics definition, a “good” bounce rate was typically considered to fall in the 40%-60% range. This is a broad statement, and in reality, different types of sites will have different bounce rate benchmarks.
For blogs and content-heavy pages, look for a GA4 bounce rate that is slightly lower than your Universal Analytics bounce rate. This shift makes sense, given the new definition of bounce rate. If someone reads an entire article and then immediately leaves the site, they will no longer be counted as a bounce. Crucially, there was no time component to the definition of bounce rate in UA. A user could read an entire article for 5 minutes, leave the site, and still be considered a bounce. GA4 considers any session lasting longer than 10 seconds to be engaged, or not a bounce.
For an in-depth look at bounce rates across industries, CXL conducted a study on bounce rate targets in specific sectors such as travel or finance.
How to improve your bounce rate in GA4
1. Google PageSpeed
One of the most frustrating experiences as a web user is landing on a page from Google search or a referral link, and finding that the site loads too slowly. In fact, Hubspot estimates that 70% of consumers may lose their desire to purchase a product online if a website loads too slowly.
Start by measuring the Google PageSpeed of your page with a tool like PageSpeed Insights. This tool will give your site a score between 0 and 100, along with recommendations on how to boost your speed. Common recommendations include:
Reducing image size
Utilizing image caching
Eliminating unused JavaScript or CSS
Loading below-the-fold resources asynchronously
Optimizing your load time is a good place to start to improve your website’s bounce rate. PageSpeed is also a confirmed ranking factor for Google search, so having a strong score can also improve your organic search rankings.
2. Match user intent
Make sure that your page matches the intent of the traffic landing on it. To see which organic search keywords are driving users to your page, check your Performance report in Google Search Console. Analyze the keywords driving visitors to your page.
Ask yourself, would people searching for these keywords be satisfied with the content they are seeing on your site, or is there a disconnect?
3. Add video
Video is a good way to improve your page’s bounce rate. Embedding a video with an eye-catching thumbnail can entice visitors to spend more time with your page.
Remember, in GA4, sessions are not considered a bounce if they last beyond 10 seconds. So, if a user watches a video for any amount of time longer than that, they will not be counted towards your bounce rate.
4. Create an internal linking strategy
Internal linking is good for SEO, as well as user engagement. Contextual references to other site pages will help users find other relevant content. By definition, if users visit multiple pages within a single session, they will not be counted as a ‘bounce’ in GA4.
Links to other site pages within your content will help spread ‘link equity’, and make it easier for Google to crawl and navigate your domain, while increasing the likelihood that readers will dive deeper into your site.
5. Optimize your pages for conversion through call-to-actions (CTAs)
Whether you are aiming to reduce bounce rate on your home page, blog posts, product pages, or anywhere else on your site, make sure that you include CTAs.
CTAs can include contact forms, phone numbers, links to product pages, newsletter sign-ups, PDF downloads, or any other website event that will help you achieve your business goals. Whatever the objective of your business, make sure that users are guided to this endpoint by your content.
Check out Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to GA4 for more on tracking these types of conversion events.
6. Add social proof or E-E-A-T to your page
Google E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Providing readers with indications of authorship and editorial standards can reinforce their trust in your site. In my experience, users are more likely to spend time with content if they are given an immediate indication of its trustworthiness.
For long-form content publications such as blogs or news websites, this typically involves including a publish date, ‘last updated’ date, author byline, and ideally, a brief author bio.
Image source: Investopedia.com
Does bounce rate matter in 2023?
GA4’s new definition of bounce rate is better equipped to measure user engagement for the modern web. It now understands that single-page website visits can still be valuable for your business.
This does not mean that bounce rate becomes a standalone be-all-end-all KPI to measure site performance, however. For example, a user can read one of your blog posts, thereby having a session longer than 10 seconds, and then leave the site without interacting in any other way.
If you are interested in tracking website interactions, or of course, conversions, GA4’s event reporting capabilities are a better fit. If you are looking for a general measure of visitor interaction or content ‘stickiness’, bounce rate, engagement rate, and average engagement time can be an effective combo of metrics to make that determination.
The bottom line with bounce rate in GA4 is that it is the inverse of engagement rate. Including only one of these metrics in your reports will work for most people because they tell opposite sides of the same story.
I prefer telling the ‘positive’ spin on that story. For example, telling your client that their page has a 75% engagement rate sounds like a better story than letting them know you’ve reduced their bounce rate to 25%.
There is some subjectivity in deciding which of these two metrics to report on, or if you choose to include both in your reporting. However, either metric can tell a compelling story about your ability to improve user engagement for your clients as an SEO or Conversion Rate Optimizer.
