Bounce Rate
-
Howdy Mozzers
Does anyone know if the 'average time on site' in Google analytics is calculated with bounce rate included?
For example if you have a 50% bounce rate and your average time on site is 2 minutes the actual time would be 4 minutes as the 50% bounce rate time is classed as 0.
I hope that is clear!
Cheers
-
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a certain page or site who only visited one page and then left the site. It's not related to the amount of time spent on a site. The amount of time spent on a site is the average time overall for time spent on the site before leaving. Hope that helps.
-
Going back a step, "Average Time On Site' in my opinion, is not a relevant statistic any more as internet connection speed increases.
With dial up connection the customer paid per minute on-line. Now with flat rates for broadband people leave pages open when they step away from their computers - I've had pages open at the office literally for days! That would really muck up anyone's stats. (That's not why I do it though)
-
There is an easy way to fix this. Create a custom advanced segment to only include visits with pageviews > 1. This will allow you to see avg time on site for all visitors excluding bounces.
-
I think it could massively confuse things if they didn't take it into account. Should those page views be deleted as well then? Do they not count as unique visitors or visitors at all?
Don;t get me wrong, I see where you are coming from, but the completely objective data is what makes GA so valuable.
-
It's a shame Google are counting this. I see their reasons though I believe. Bounces did originally want to view your site, so they are a visitor in theory. It does skew the data massively however
-
Yep good answer cheers.
Conclusion - Totally inaccurate!
-
-
There is some great info about this on this link: https://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=7f1a0537ed9f8fe8&hl=en
Rather than me paraphrasing and messing it up or copying/plagiarizing their answer, I'll just point you in the right direction.
-
Can you provide a link to the horses mouth?
-
Average time on site includes bounces (counted as 0 seconds) in the calculations.
See http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/01/standard-metrics-revisited-time-on-page-and-time-on-site.html
-
Agreed! Very misleading and inaccurate if it is included.
-
Haha don't worry your safe...for now!
Like all thing its should be used as a relative measure but it can be quite misleading especially for an obsessed client who doesn't know the real meaning of bounce rate, hence the reason for my question so I can explain it but the time on site is also misleading if the bounce rate is included.
-
I'm pretty sure that bounced traffic isn't calculated in the average time on site, Analytics put 0 because it can't calculate the time on site unless a visitor hit a second page within the same Analytics code (site). I'm not 100% sure but that would be really irrelevant to include bounced traffic to this metric.
-
Yeah, I'm assuming that from Googles view of analytics is post search, thus time after search...
I might be completely wrong (don't sue, kill or hurt me!), however I couldn't find a better answer from a more reputable source!
-
Hmm I guess it could be clearer and be labelled as 'avg. time on site' rather than 'time after search' which I assume your referring to?
-
I've always believed that the time on site is a global average of all visitors. Never thought to question myself until now though. Aran seems to have found the answer. Thanks
-
Hi, your question led me on an interesting trip though Google help, revisiting the basics of analytics.
Google define the Bounce Rate as:
"Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page" - Google Webmaster Help http://bit.ly/gPPNPj - This makes me think of single page sites, do they have 100% bounce rate?
Heres a look at how Google Analytics performs it calculations. http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77234
What I took from this is that all visitor times are taken and averaged, bounce or not.
Cheers
Aran
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 Rates: Leaving my domain.com/blog to shop on mydomain.com counts as bounce rate?
Hello! I have a kind of difficult question. On my main domain i have: Store: mydomain.com and wordpress blog on mydomain.com/blog If I have a link to a specific product on my blog and user goes to the product on the store, will bounce rate increase or as it's the same domain will be like a new page view? Different CMS's and blog is on a different analytics account than the store. I hope i could explain myself! Thank you
Reporting & Analytics | | prozis0 -
Why Is My Traffic Going Up But My Alexa Rating Getting Worse?
I am curious why my Alexa rating has been getting worse over the last few weeks. My organic traffic is up, direct visits and social networking visits are up but my Alexa has been getting worse and worse. Is anyone having the same problem? Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Videogamefan0 -
Conversion Rate Higher Than Landing Page Visits?
Interesting to see in Google Analytics that the conversion rate is higher than landing page visits - could it be attributed to a visitor clicking the CTA button multiple times? Or perhaps there is duplicate GA code on the conversion page since we utilize both Google Analytics and HubSpot. (see attached funnel screenshot) Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-10.49.09-AM.png
Reporting & Analytics | | W210 -
Irrelevant page with high bounce rate
I have a page on my site, www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/kolea-rentals/floor-plans, that gets me roughly 17% of my traffic. That being said it is not really relevant traffic because it comes from the search term "floor plans", which really has nothing to do with Hawaii vacation rentals, which is what I do. My question is does Google know how to figure that out when they are looking at my stats or is there a way to let google know that that page probably should not show up for that search phrase? On the positive, they are nice floor plans and if someone is searching for ideas for floor plans and see one of them in google images then it probably could help them, but it really is not relevant to my business. It has a 80% bounce rate, but does have an average time on page of 1.5 minutes, which is a fair amount for what is there.
Reporting & Analytics | | RobDalton0 -
Reach local driving up bounce rate...
Hi all! I have a new client that I did a website for. After a month, looking at the analytics, it shows that while the site visits from reach local is more than the organic google, the reachlocal traffic is bouncing, causing the overall website bounce rate to skyrocket. Organic bounce rate is 47.62% and the reachlocal is at 84.25% driving the overall bounce rate to 68! Duration of the reachlocal traffic is at :56 vs 3:41 for organic. (SEE ATTACHED IMAGE) I'm guessing this all means that the reachlocal traffic is obviously not quality, so does that mean they are targeting non-relevant keywords? I don't have any experience dealing with reachlocal. Should I recommend my client to drop it? And if so, how to stop that traffic from coming to the site? I'm sure this is an easy one for you pros! Thanks! ~BB MUW959h.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | BBuck0 -
Another high bounce rate
Hi there, One of my top landing pages has an 81% bounce rate. http://www.snowbusiness.com/what-we-do/film,-tv-and-advertising.aspx My first thoughts are purely bad IA and usability, but i know there must be loads of other things people might identify. Thanks in advance, Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | SnowFX0 -
Goal Conversion Rate increase AND Abandonment Increase
I wonder if someone can help me understand some data I'm seeing in Google Analytics. SetUp Goal with 3 step Funnel Date Comparison is 1st-8th September & 1st-8th June The Data (pics attached) Looking at the Goal Conversion Rate I can see: September - 11.58% vs June - 10.42% an increase which Google shows as (+11.18%) For same time period Abandonment Rate is showing September - 71.3% vs June - 61.5% - an increase which Google shows as (+16.5%) The Questions How can I bee seeing both an increase in conversion rate AND and increase in Abandonment rate on the funnel? And why doesnt "(Conversion Rate + Abandonment Rate) = 100%" ? Many thanks for any help! yqwFP.png cj5dn.png
Reporting & Analytics | | TobiasM0 -
Low bounce rate; need help troubleshooting code
I've had an outside developer do a bunch of custom work in Google Analytics to get my site to integrate with Foxycart and accurately report sales in the ecommerce section. With a foxycart upgrade came more GA tweaking, and now my bounce rate is at 1-2%. I know this isn't right, and suspecting there is something triggering GA a second time, causing a second page load, or something. Could someone that loves code look at http://www.strikemodels.com/ and tell me if they can easily spot what's obliterating the accuracy of my bounce rate calculations? Or do I need to go back to my dev and up the can of GA worms to troubleshoot things? As you can tell by the code, I'm running the latest version of WP with a few plugins, Thesis 1.8, and on Apache.
Reporting & Analytics | | KeriMorgret0
