Google Analytics and Bounce Rates Query - Should I block access from foreign countries ?

[PeteC12]

Hi ,

When I look at my google analytics for my UK Website, I can see alot of visits come from outside the UK , i.e Brazil and USA. Both of which give me almost 100% bounce rates from people visiting from there.

I am wondering, if google looks at bounce rates with regards to ranking factors and should I therefore block access to my site from visitors outside the UK ?... Would this help increase my rankings ?

Given that we only serve uk customers, I cant see any benefit of allowing non uk customers the ability to see the site .

what does people think ?

thanks

pete

[flyntime_tx]

Yes it is (clear), and I'll review the Analytics documentation for more details.  Really appreciate you taking the time to reply.    ~Mike

[DirkC]

Hi Mike,

I don't have access to a of pc now. From my memory you first create a filter, and then aply the filter to a new view. You should always keep one view in original state without any filters. Hope this is clear. Hope it is sufficiently clear.

rgds

Dirk

[flyntime_tx]

Thanks Dirk.  That answered the issue I was uncertain about, which was whether blocking visitors from Analytics reports truly prevents them from hitting the site (even an error page), and apparently it doesn't so your answer makes perfect sense.

One more question:  Does an Analytics filter automatically apply to all Analytics views/reports for that domain/site, or does a filter have to be assigned to the views I want it to affect (in this case, all of them)?

Thanks for the quick response!
Mike

[DirkC]

Hi Michael

The first thing you should do is to define the geography you are targeting in webmaster tools (If you have a generic tld).

if you would block visitors from Brazil on your site the bounce rate measured by analytics will go down. However, Google is not using your analytics data to measure the bounce rate (at least that is what they claim). As al these people get an error message when they try to visit your site,the real bounce-rate will increase rather than go down, making the situation even worse, you just would not be aware of it.

What you could do is set a custom filter in analytics, showing only the traffic from your target country and apply this filter to a new view. This gives you better insights on the behavior of your target audience.

rgds

Dirk

[flyntime_tx]

I've got a similar problem with nearly 50% of the traffic to many of my client's sites coming from Brazil.  My clients are and will only ever be local, small town operations, so my questions are:

1.  Why it's not a good idea to block those visits that are irrelevant to the traffic we want to measure.
2.  Bounce rate is considered to play at least some role in the ranking algorithm, or at least I always thought so.  If over 50% of my traffic is bouncing because it's bot driven, spam related, etc, shouldn't I be worried about the adverse affect on my bounce rate?

Just trying to understand the rules to this game.  

Thanks!
Mike

[PeteC12]

Many thanks All

Peter

[Ray-pp]

I'd like to add to the answers above.

First, I agree - do not block foreign visitors. There are many reasons for this, do not worry about their bounce rates.

Second, and the part I'm adding, is I suggest setting up a Filtered View in your Google Analytics that only tracks your target demographic, in your situation the UK visitors.

This Filtered View will allow you to see more accurate metrics for the people you're targeting and allow you to do a better analysis of your web analytics. Make sure to add that filtered view and not overwrite your unfiltered view, so if you ever do expand into the other geographic locations you can dig into their performance analytics as well.

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi Pete,

Please don't block access to foreigners. You can set the geo-target in Google webmaster tools account, if you have not already done so. It is completely normal with country-specific websites getting traffic from all over the World. A small or probably 1 in a thousand foreign visits might come from UK people traveling abroad. So to conclude, its my honest opinion not to block access to foreigners even the bounce rates might be alarming. Its common and natural and search engine like Google know about this pretty well and there won't be any issue to your website from their end.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi

[DirkC]

Blocking access to your site for foreign visitors won't change anything for your "real" bounce rate. The measured bounce rate will decrease in Analytics, but these visitors will still bounce when they get to your website.

If you're using a generic domain extension - you can indicate in Webmastertools that you are targeting the local UK market (if you use a .uk extension this is automatically the case).

I wouldn't worry too much about this bounce rate - as long as the bounce rate (and time/visit - time on page) for your UK visitors is ok

rgds

Dirk