Bounce rate
What is bounce rate?
Bounce rate is the share of visitors who leave after seeing a single page without any further interaction. A high figure is a symptom, not a diagnosis: on a contact page or a well-written answer it can be perfectly healthy, while on a category page it usually means the page did not match the search that brought the visitor.
How it is counted
In Google Analytics 4 bounce rate is the opposite of engagement rate. A visit counts as engaged when it lasts longer than ten seconds, includes a conversion event, or views two or more pages. Every other visit is a bounce. In the older Universal Analytics a bounce was any single-page visit, however long, so figures from before 2023 are not comparable with today’s.
A visitor who reads an article for three minutes and leaves is therefore not a bounce in GA4. One who looks for three seconds and goes back to Google is.
Example
An online furniture shop sees a bounce rate of 72% on its category page for sofas, against 35% for the rest of the site. Most of the bounces come from one Google Ads campaign for “cheap sofas”, while the cheapest sofa on the page costs €690 and the page opens on the most expensive models.
The shop moves that campaign to a page sorted by price, starting at €290, and adds negative keywords for searches it cannot serve. The bounce rate of that traffic falls to 41%, and the campaign’s cost per order falls by a third. The page itself was fine; it was the wrong page for that search.
Why it matters for a business
A high bounce rate is a question, not a verdict. On a contact page, a page with an opening time or a glossary answer, a short visit can mean the visitor found what they needed. On a category page, a landing page for an ad or a product page, it usually means the page did not match what the visitor expected: the wrong search, the wrong offer, or a page too slow to wait for on a phone.
The useful reading is by page and by source together. One campaign with a high bounce rate says more than a site-wide average, and a jump after a change to the site says more than the level itself.
What to ask
- Which pages have the highest bounce rate, and is a short visit fine on them or a problem?
- Which sources and campaigns bring the visits that bounce?
- Does the page someone lands on answer the search or the ad that brought them?
- Did the rate change after a change to the site, the ads or the season?
A high bounce rate is a question, not a verdict. Which pages lose people, and why, is something we check in our digital marketing work.