Analytics bounce rate change
-
Hi mozzers,
I have a little riddle. A few weeks ago the bounce rate on one of our website dropped 90% - from 45 % average to 5 % average. We haven't changed much in the code of the site, layout or anything else. The traffic is pretty stable too.
Anyone can guess why? Or have experienced something similar?
-
Thank you Keri. Such a speedy response!
And NOW it makes sense. So happy to have that resolved.
-
Having it there twice can cause issues. I myself have an old post with this exact issue. What happens is that the tracking code fires twice.
My simplistic understanding, which may be good enough here:
Firing only once in a session: visitor didn't go to any other page, they're a bounce.
Firing more than once in a session: visitor did something else! they didn't bounce!
IIRC, my pageviews and pages per visit were also higher. Get the duplicate GA code off, and make an annotation in Google Analytics itself of what happened, so six months or two years down the road someone can look and understand why the metrics are wonky for that time span.
-
I know this is an old thread, but it might be exactly what I need.
A client site has seen a dramatic drop in bounce rates. They were making changes to the site layout around the time bounce rates suddenly dropped. I can see that they have Google Analytics installed twice on all pages. Could that be the problem?
If yes, why would having analytics installed twice cause the bounce rate to drop dramatically. Are the other site metrics reliable?
Any help would be much appreciated!
-
Yep, if you integrated any Facebook features around that time, there's a known FB bug that causes any visitor using Internet Explorer to re-load the page with "?fb_xd_fragment=" appended to the URL.
If you're being affected by this bug, you can look at behavior across browsers (FFX and Chrome are not affected by this bug), or you can search for URLs with that query string in them. The bug has been around for over a year, but FB has assigned it a P5, so not clear on when a definitive / easy fix is forthcoming.
-
Seems like a new post click overlay.
Thanks for the "next page" tip Greg!
-
Most likely something on your page is sending multiple calls/hits to Google. I've seen this happen with Facebook Connect. Look at the Navigation Summary report for pages that have this lower bounce rate to see if the "next page" is the same page (aka a self-referral). If so, that's your issue.
If you've started tracking Ajax interactions, that will also lower your bounce rate.
-
I've seen abnormally high bounce rates coming from a non 301 redirected domain before. Did you change the direction of any of your domains?
-
Ah! have you seen this?
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Analytics/thread?tid=57d6431b146c86a2&hl=en
-
No the data are site-wide, so the bounce rate has dropped on all pages. And the GA code is not installed twice. It's very strange.
-
Something accidental where you serve two pages? Or have your analytics twice on the page?
-
Hi Elias
Thanks for checking. I checked a bunch of other websites too, with no change.
And yes, the change is similar on all traffic sources.
-
Hi Thomas,
That's very odd! I've just checked some of our sites but none of them have seen anything like that.
As you haven't changed much in terms of layout then it would appear that there is a problem with your analytics tracking.
Is the change in bounce rate constant across all traffic searches i.e. search, direct etc?
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
-
How to set and understand behavior flow in google analytic?
Hello Experts, How to set and understand behavior flow in google analytic? I have attached screenshot of my behavior flow it is showing not set. So how to set? Thanks! MAQnG SQ7QM
Reporting & Analytics | | micey1230 -
Why few pages have more than 100% bounce rate?
Hello All, For my ecommerce site approx more than 30k products I have. In Google Analytic approx daily for few products approx 10-15 products bounce rate show 300%, 200%, 150%, 140%, 125% how? and what is the solution? Product page daily change. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Johny123450 -
Google analytics Goals and Funnels??
Hey - how's things? I've got 2 goals setup, each of which use the same thank you page but with different required funnels. The results have been identical for the last few weeks - which tells me I've got something wrong!! The first goal has a contact form on every page in the /products/ directory set up like this:
Reporting & Analytics | | agua
destination equal to: /thanks-enquiry/funnel step1 page: ^/products/.* required: yes The first goal has a form on 1 page called /on-sale set up like this:
destination equal to: /thanks-enquiry/
funnel step1 page: /on-sale required: yes Any ideas?0 -
Google Analytics: Trackbacks & Network Referrals?
Buon Pormeriggio from 15 degrees C mostly cloudy Wetherby UK 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
Whats the difference between Trackbacks & Network referrals within Google analytics social media reporting? I'd like to specifically understand why a link to site i'm working on withing this post:
http://huddled.co.uk/huddled-interviews-nicola-schaefer-from-liverpool-fc-e-l-i-t-e-s-8335/ is classed as Trackback & not a Network refferral 😞 Illustrated here is the link thats being recorded as a track back:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/track-back-query_zpsbab2679b.jpg And here is the data:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-trackbacks-2_zps2861fa17.jpg But why is not showing up in Network referrals? Thanks in advance,
David0 -
Client has two default analytics accounts
A client has provided me with their analytics access but i notice that there are two default accounts on their account. They have two UA numbers. The first UA number is in their company name and the other UA number is in another company name with my clients website underneath. Their UA number in their company name is not showing any results however the other company UA number is showing results. Does anyone know why they will have two accounts and if this will cause a problem when trying to link their seo moz campaign to their analytics to track their keywords?
Reporting & Analytics | | Shelly760 -
Goal tracking in Google Analytics
Hi folks I read from various sources that if you setup goals in Google Analytics each of these goals can only be fulfilled once per visit. Also some sources suggesting that only one goal from each goal group can be fulfilled per visit. On our site we have a goal for external links since this provides value to partners. Some users do open an external link in a new tab, then come back to the main site. Any further goal completions would then not get tracked. Since we apply a result based payment model for our work this means we are literally loosing money. Anyone has official info from Google on this? Can it be configured? How long is a visit? Thanks a million and have a great day. Fredrik
Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify0 -
Google Analytics Organic Keyword (Not Provided) Alternative Hacks?
I'm sure everyone is sick of the (Not Provided) keywords because I know I am, and Google reckons that you should only see 10% or less (I'm currently around 13% and growing). I am seeking alternatives or hacks that will help display the keywords? If you have a hack to actually display the keywords, please share it your ideas and thoughts? I recently implemented a hack that will show the landing page of the keywords which is better than nothing. But as an eCommerce site, I have about 10% of my transactions which not provided, knowing the keywords would really help. Would love to hear your thoughts?
Reporting & Analytics | | upick-1623911 -
Regular Expressions in Google Analytics
I want to use the Google Analytics landing page reports to look at the bounce rate of top level pages excluding the homepage. So pages with urls: www.example.com/example Does anyone know a regular expression that will allow me to do this? Just to clarify I do not want to look at the bounce rate of the homepage or any pages deeper than www.example.com/example e.g: www.example.com/example/example www.example.com/example/example/example etc Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | CPLDistribution0