Why would my Bounce Rate drop from 40% to 2% over 3 days without making any major changes to my site www.hiltonhead.com?
-
Our Wordpress site has had an historical bounce rate of 40% for the last 3 years but last Thursday it dropped to 17%, Friday to 7% and now is running at 2%. The pageviews per visit have also increased from 3 to almost 6.
Thanks
-
Serge and Keri,
thanks for your response, after getting your replies i checked and indeed there was an additional google_analytics_auto.js file that was installed. Turns out that Hostgator's cpanel has a google analytics integration program that was activated on the 9th (when everything started getting weird) and it modified my .htaccess file to load the additional .js file ... hopefully that was the problem ,will keep you updated.
Thank you!
-
I'm looking at the source, and I see /google_analytics_auto.js as well as Yoast's wordpress script. You might want to ask about that and see if someone just installed one of those and if that's causing the problem.
-
I'm thinking the same way Serge is. I've seen that happen when you get two analytics scripts firing at once, especially if one is a plugin and one is custom-coded.
-
have you installed any new js scripts? analytics + commerce?
any new plugins?
any suspicious traffic?
-
umm that's a loaded question. I'd start by segmenting your traffic - that is search, direct and referral - compare the different timeframes. If there is a dramatic difference work out why? If nothing starts out just compare everything in your analytics account, could be a new ranking, referral. Also you could have lost a ranking or a link so actually your bounce rate has gone down because your overall traffic has gone down.
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
-
Bounce rate high because customer login on different domain
Years ago we switch domain names for our site for almost everything except the client log in portal. Now we are experiencing really high bounce rates because site visitors will go to our site and then click on the client log in portal which takes them off our domain and on to our old domain. Because of this our bounce rate is around 80% and I know this is negatively effecting our traffic. Is there any way to fix this without switching the domain for the client log-in portal? Thanks for everyone's help!
Search Behavior | | Brit-Page0 -
Wanting to see when a user exists form site and its jopurney while on site please
Hi there, Wondering if you can help please? I am needing to know bounce rates on a landing page and also wanting to know if they landed on that page and went from that page to another and another... how can i look at that on MOZ please? Thanks Cass
Search Behavior | | AITLtd0 -
Page ranking in .com but not in .co.uk
Hi there, I tried to search the Q&A but couldn't find any answers to my issue. We have a page that is ranking #2 for the term "translation memory" in google.com, but it doesn't show in Google.co.uk. This has been like this for weeks now. We are not targeting any specific country in GWT. Does anyone know a possible explanation for this? Thank you.
Search Behavior | | SDLOnlineChannel0 -
What's the best way to redirect mobile site?
Hi, We have a mobile website using a sub-directory domain.com/m/whatever-page/. Our mobile is completely separate site from desktop version. What's the best way to handle the redirection from mobile visitors and those that are searching from mobile and see desktop version in the search result? Appreciate anyone's expert advise. Thanks,
Search Behavior | | DirectAsia.com
Willy0 -
Micro Location Site with EMD , Property related
Hi I have a client, who focus is on Commercial property leasing in Johannesburg and surrounding area's. We find that people search for "area"& "property type" The client bought 50 exact match domains for keywords that we currently run in Google Adwords for example:We advertise on keywords: "Midrand offices to let" and bought Midrandofficestolet.com, now the group wants to make small micro sites with unique article about commercial property in that area "Midrand" with a link to the main site where the "midrand properties" are listed . The feeder or micro sites will also have contact details of main site. the domains will all be hosted on the same server, registered to the same owner est. Is this typical link farming? or should we rather build the articles on the main website and park the domains on the area categories? The clients main-set is that he will same money on adwords by owning the EMD and from that link to his main site Your guidance will be much appriciated
Search Behavior | | Zooka0 -
2 websites for 2 dealer locations or one website for both locations - Thoughts?
I'm trying to decide what would be the best option for my client. They are a car dealership group who own 2 dealerships about a half hour away from each other. The dealerships have the same name but are just located in different locations. One dealership is in a small city in competition with several other dealerships within the city. "Dealership name city name" The other dealership they own (Same dealership name) is located in a small town close to an even larger city. "Same dealership name small town name" My options are: 1. Creating 1 authoritative website optimized for all 3 locations. The 2 cities both dealerships are located in as well as the large city close to the small town. This option would be less time consuming, we would only have to earn links, citations & blog for one website. However we'd still need to have citations using both dealership addresses. So that's still double the work. This site would probably be more authoritative and we could have a page promoting each dealership & have shared vehicle inventory. We'd attach 2 Google+ pages using the different addresses & have both location addresses prominently in the footer of the site. 2. Create 2 separate websites for each dealership & target the surrounding towns/cities in their respective areas (even though both dealerships are only a half hour apart). This option is more time consuming as we'd have to earn double the amount of links. Work on citation building, blog for 2 websites etc. But we wouldn't be diluting our SEO by trying to rank for all 3 locations. We'd have a better chance if we focused on each locations separately on 2 sites. BUT the 2 sites would have less authority. What is everyone's thoughts? What would you recommend to be the best option. Money isn't an issue. Thanks so much for any help.
Search Behavior | | DCochrane0 -
How to test a site for usability with hundreds users and get genuine feedback?
My question is twofold; firstly is there a recommended company that I could use to get feedback on my site usability. Ideally I would like this company to arrange a focus group of a couple hundred people that fit into the right demographic and organise a report on the opinions of the group and the issues faced. Secondly an in-house understanding of usability Now I would like to think that when I review a site for usability I am not biased in any way. But I believe that if I look at the page that I have created or even collaborated on that I will always miss usability issues as I frankly think my/our creation is amazing. I'm interested to know how people rank and check their site usability and what factors rank highest in their assessments i.e. the tools you use and how you use them.
Search Behavior | | Stefan-Thorpe0 -
Is there a site intelligence product that offers data on subdirectories of a competitor site?
Services like Compete and Quantcast provide information on competitive sites, but as far as I can tell only at the aggregated domain level. Is there a similar service (paid or free) that provides this type of data - especially demographics - for a subdirectory? For example, if my competitor has widely different product categories and I suspect that the audience for Product B is very different from his site as a whole (which is mostly focused around his major product, Product A) is there any way to get info on that without actually owning the site and having access to Analytics/Facebook OpenGraph etc.?
Search Behavior | | jliu.blitz0