Does Google Analytics Adjusted Bounce Rate Lead to Increase in Average Time per Visitor?
-
Hello,
I just recently implemented adjusted bounce rate onto one of the websites that I track via google analytics. (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2322974/How-to-Implement-Adjusted-Bounce-Rate-ABR-via-Google-Tag-Manager-Tutorial)
Since doing so, obviously my bounce rate has gone down significantly, nearly half of what it use to be, but I've also noticed an increase in the average time per visitor. In fact, the increase of average time per visitor began the same day I adjusted the bounce rate.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Can someone please explain why/how this may occur?
-
You are correct, adding code to a page to 'adjust' the bounce rate can effect your 'average time per visitor' statistic.
This is because of how google measures the time spent on a page...
Normally, if a user opens one page, then does not visit any more pages on your site, it will count as a bounce (even if the user had remained on that page browsing for 10 minutes). This is because there is only one call made to google analytics when the page is opened. There is no call made to google analytics when the page is closed.
So normally, the 'time on page' is calculated by taking the time stamp of when the current page is opened, and comparing it to when the next page on your site is opened. The difference between the two is your 'time on (previous) page'.
So what happens when a user only opens one page on your site and leaves (bounces)? This will be counted as a 0 second visit (even if the user was on the site for 10 minutes). Thus bringing down the average visit time for all visits.
What happens when you add the 'adjusted bounce rate' code to your page, is that a 2nd call is made after x seconds to the google server.... Allowing google to know that the user has in fact remained on the page for an extended period of time. So now a whole bunch of these '0' second (bounced) sessions will be converted to longer sessions based on the time between the 2 time stamps.
The more 'one page only' visits you have to your site, the more this has the potential to skew your average session time.
On a side note, this will also effect the last page visited of multi-page sessions, as normally google would not know how much time was spent on the last page of the site as well.
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 long does google takes to crawl a single site ?
lately i have been thinking , when a crawler visits an already visited site or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?
Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz0 -
GSC Performance completely dropped off, but Google Analytics is steady. Why can't GSC track my site anymore?
Hey everyone! I'm having a weird issue that I've never experienced before. For one of my clients, GSC has a complete drop-off in the Performance section. All of the data shows that everything fell flat, or almost completely flat. But in Google Analytics, we have steady results. No huge drop-off in traffic, etc. Do any of you know why GSC would all of a sudden be unable to crawl our site? Or track this data? Let me know what you think!
Algorithm Updates | | TaylorAtVelox
Thanks!2 -
SEO - Google Local Listing & Same Day Delivery
Hi We are looking to offer same day delivery if you're in a 20 mile radius to us. I'm trying to do some research on how to optimise this for Google organic listings. Would this be the same as optimising for a local business listing? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks! Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
In how much time will my search visibility increase?
Hey I really wanna know how much time will take to my search visibility increase!! Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | THOMAZDANDREA10 -
Google above the fold update
Hi everyone, Ever since the Jan 19th Google 'above the fold update' I have noticed some strange ranking changes in some of my sites. 1. rankings increased dramatically (not in top 50 to page 2) on Jan 19th for about 5 days then dropped out completely from the top 50. 2. our rankings then did the same thing again around Feb 2nd for about 5 -6 days then has bottomed out ever since. We do not have any ads on the site but our pages are dominated by images for most of the 'above the fold' section then followed by the content down the page. Any insight into this would be much appreciated. Cheers, Andrew
Algorithm Updates | | jay.raman0 -
Google SERP UI in December
For retailers (or commercial queries), it seems like PPC ads, product ads and google shopping links were allocated more pixel real estate in December than in previous years, and the amount of pixel real estate allocated to organic listings declined further. I was wondering if anyone had any knowledge on when these changes were rolled out.
Algorithm Updates | | enoch0 -
Did google change their algorithm over the past week?
I did some home page optimization with the seo moz on page key word optimization tool and we are now back in the top three in the past week (after dropping to page 3 a month or so ago). It seems that google has gone back to combining google places with organic searches. Has anyone else noticed this type of change? I did read some posts about panda 2.2, which seems to explain some of these findings. I am wondering if things are in flux or they may be more stable this way? Thanks for the insights.
Algorithm Updates | | fertilityhealth0 -
Google changing case of URLs in SERPs?
Noticed some strange behavior over the last week or so regarding our SERPs and I haven't been able to find anything on the web about what might be happening. Over the past two weeks, I've been seeing our URLs slowly change from upper case to lower case in the SERPs. Our URLs are usually /Blue-Fuzzy-Widgets.htm but Google has slowly been switching them to /blue-fuzzy-widgets.htm. There has been no change in our actual rankings nor has it happened to anyone else in the space. We're quite dumbfounded as to why Google would choose to serve the lower case URL. To be clear, we do not build links to these lower case URLs, only the upper. Any ideas what might be happening here?
Algorithm Updates | | Natitude0