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
-
Seeing massive spikes in direct traffic with 100% bounce rates
Hi all, Looking through Analytics yesterday, I saw that my website had a huge increase in direct traffic in sessions. However, they apparently spent 0 seconds on the website in total so that raised plenty of red flags. Does anyone have reasons why this might be? Spam or bug? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Whittie0 -
Track subdomain in analytics
Hi, Our jobs section has recently been moved on to a subdomain https://jobs.ourwebsite.co.uk/home.html which is handled by a third party. Our analytics for the jobs section was lost as no code was added to the pages. Previously it was part of the main site. How do I track it as a subdomain so that it appears to be part of our main site? We have the old GA and universal GA code on the site Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Houses0 -
Is Google analytics not working properly anymore?
Hi mozzers, We launched a website 2 months ago and when monitoring Organic data on GA we had an average of 23% bounce rate like a month ago but the last 2 weeks I noticed that bounce rate=0%. This is very weird especially that we haven't modified the existing pages and that multiple keywords show an average site duration of 0 seconds. Any thoughts about this discrepancy? Do you think that there is an issue with the GATC implemented? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Google Analytics "Undetermined" Keyword
Google analytics is suddenly showing a new keyword "undetermined". Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic with the primary dimension set to Keyword. It's currently our 13th keyword and it is displayed without parentheses around that you see with (not provided) or (not set). Anyone have any idea what this is? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Morris770 -
Setting up Google Analytics for Subsites
I currently have one main .com site and am planning on launching geo-location subsites .co.uk, .com.au, .ru, etc... Traffic will flow between both sites and some of the content on the subsites will be duplicate and therefore include a canonical tag to the main site. I want to set up GA to capture who is going to the subsites and vice versa and correctly capture crossover traffic. Any advice on implementing advanced analytics directly (or links to sources that will direct me the right direction for this project)
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0 -
Google Analytics
Hello In Google analytics you can obtain the number of visits as a result of non-paid search. You can also set up custom reports to find the number of organic searches. The numbers are different, so what is the obvious difference between these two metrics that I'm missing. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0 -
How do I find out how well a page converts in Analytics
Hello All, I am looking to find out how well a page converts in Analytics. A simple request you would thing, but no! First off let me list what I don't want to know: I don't want to know the conversion rate of a product I don't want to know the conversion rate based on the landing page What I want to know is how many people click to add the product to their basket on a particular page (which I understand is not strictly the conversion rate, but whatever). So the ways I have tried unsuccessfully are: The Analytics overlay (the in page Analytics thing) - this doesn't work because the "Add to Basket" button is not a link, it is an input. The Navigation Summary - this doesn't work because most of the time the /shopping_cart.php URL doesn't come up in the short list, and if you search for the URL in the search box beneath the percentages get all skewed. The most obvious solution would be Event tracking but I can't get that implemented in the short term. So does anyone have the answer to this most curious of conundrums? Thanking you in advance, Rich
Reporting & Analytics | | tonyatfat0 -
Tracking Required Form Fields in Google Analytics
I tried searching for this elsewhere but am having a hard time finding a good answer. Is it possible to track the effect of required form fields on conversions in Google Analytics? In other words, how do I track whether or not more/less people fill out a form if I make "Last Name" a required field? Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | kylesuss0