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
-
Viewing search results for 'When searching in google we find our site in the first position but when some others search it is seen on the second page 1 st position why is this happening?'
Viewing search results for 'When searching in google we find our site in the first position but when some others search it is seen on the second page 1 st position why is this happening?'
Search Behavior | | Alyaauditors0 -
With MFI, should we delete our mobile version of our site?
I'll start by stating that a brand new responsive site is under development and will be launching early 2019. Until then, with Mobile First Indexing, we're curious if we should remove our mobile site altogether. Looking at Google guidelines, it looks like we have Dynamic serving content, so when a mobile device is used, a VERY TRIMMED down version of our site content is presented. I read that if a mobile version doesn't exist, google will use the MFI indexing on the desktop version still, since that is what is rendered on a mobile device. If Google starts using our mobile site for its indexing, we're not going to be looking good. At this point, are there negative affects to removing our mobile site and having the desktop version render on all devices?
Search Behavior | | Technical_Contact0 -
Vanish from google after choosing preferred domain and fixing 40 duplicate meta descriptions?
I recently followed 2 Google webmaster suggestions to clean up the on page SEO for our site. I chose a preferred domain 2 weeks ago(to www.website.com) and fixed the duplicate meta descriptions that our CMS was setting to unique and more natural descriptions for each page. I did that 3 days ago. Webmaster tools still says they are duplicates because it hasn't crawled the whole site yet. We have been fortunate enough to have some of our blog posts be covered by yahoo.com, cnet.com, huffingtonpost.com, gizmodo.com, etc. That is some major backlink juice and, as recently as 2 weeks ago, our website would be the #1 result when searching Google for "ourwebsite.com exact title of very popular blog post". Now it is on the 3rd page, and the top results are the websites that linked to our blog post. So....what gives? Is there a specific area I should look at? Our should I wait for Google to fully index our whole site now that changes have been made? It should be noted that our rankings have stayed the same in yahoo and bing. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Search Behavior | | garyislearning0 -
SERP with no "www"
I have noticed that Google SERP without login is showing the domains without " www " - all of them. Have you seen this too? What does it mean for us?
Search Behavior | | Elchanan0 -
GWMT - "Tag Site For Child Directed Treatment" Effect On Search / Rankings?
Hi All, We have a client who has been directed to tag their site for "Child Directed Treatment" in Webmaster tools to comply with AdExchange policies. The site is, generally speaking, directed at those between the ages of 13 and 16 along with their parents, but does NOT collect any data (No sign in, login, signups etc). You can find out more about the specific tag here (unfortunately not much more about it) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3221080?hl=en Our concern is that we have never heard of this specific tag, and our client is asking us to let them know if that this will have no effect on search traffic or ranking. I can't find much in the way of anyone who HAS implemented this tag and the effects it has had on their site. They are ad supported, receive millions of unique hits a month, and the majority of their traffic is from branded keywords. Would love to hear from anyone with ANY experience or thoughts on this process and what to be aware of. Your assistance is muchly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | SearchMarketers0 -
Internal Site Search Analysis
Hi Folks, I have about 6,000 internal site search phrases that I want to analyze. There are many variations and duplicates that have similar intent within the data, e.g. Employment, Employment Opportunities, Employment Application. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I can aggregate the data to get an idea of user intent. There's a lot of long-tail in there. The data does not come from Google's site search tool. I just have a spreadsheet of the terms and the number of times they were searched. Cheers!
Search Behavior | | BedeFahey0 -
Have Google changed something in Analytics
Hi Mozzers, I have a client that gets loads of traffic and since the 15th February there has been a decrease in New Visitors and an Increse in Returning. Traffic levels are the same. The returning is up and new are down by a long long shot. Have Google changed the way these visits are calculated? I can't see anything on the blog - anyone experiencing similar issues Bush
Search Behavior | | Bush_JSM0 -
How do you address 95% bounce when in makes no sense?
I have a content rich site. All of the feedback I get from users is positive in nature and the content matches exactly what people are searching for. It's easy to match search keywords with appropriate content on a "how to" site. Yet, from day one I am seeing 95+ bounce rates with time on site around 20 seconds. There are pages however with hundreds of comments and active discussions, so I have no idea how to address this problem. I have researched bounce rates and time on site until I am blue in the face with no luck in resolving the problem. Can you suggest somethings that I should change or address? high_bounce_Page_1.jpg
Search Behavior | | seoatsea0