Is it possible to see bounce rate on external sites?

[nicole.healthline]

Are there any tools that will let you see your competitor's bounce rates?

[crvw]

I don't know of any way to see the true bounce rate of a website you don't own, but compete.com will tell you the number of pages viewed / visit.  They basically see all the browser behavior of 2M users in the US, so if the sites your interested in are pretty main stream, the data will be pretty representative.  HitWise has a larger sample size (about 25M users) but they don't include bounce in their standard report set (you might be able to buy a custom report).

I'm assuming you're trying to get some data to benchmark your own bounce rate.  You might consider segmenting your traffic and focus on the bounce rate for specific segments rather than a worrying about the bounce rate for your entire site.  Your site could be much more optimized for engagement than your competitors, but if you have an extra source of junky traffic that your competitor doesn't have, your bounce rate will still be worse.  But if you and a competitor are both competing on a particular organic keyword, and you compare your bounce rate vs. there's for traffic that came from that keyword, that would be a lot more useful evaluation.