Bounce Back or Bounce Through

[SKE]

Bounce rate is defined as 'single page visits to a site divided by total visits to the site' as I understand it. It could be argued that a well designed site might vector people on to other sites effectively (I generally use Wikipedia this way for instance). On the other hand a site that bounces people back to where they came from may be genuinely poor. So the questions:

Is the bounce rate really calculated in the stated way by Google?

Is it used, as far as we know, as a metric for the search engine?

What should we do to mitigate the effects of this poor metric?!

thanks,

Mike

[KeriMorgret]

Actually, bounce rate would be of a concern to search engines, at least for visits that originate from the search engine. The SEs want the users to have a good experience, and if a user clicks on a result and then comes right back to the results page, the SEs may feel that the user did not have a good experience with that result and maybe a different result for that query should be shown.

[SKE]

Thanks, yes, it looks from this as if the experts think that Google is doing what we would hope they do and not take account of bounce through. Although of course there may be good reasons for a site not wanting bounce through either (as EGOL notes), it shouldn't be a concern for the search engines

[heatherrobinson]

As far as I'm aware, Google will use your 'bounce back' rate (where by users return to the search results page straight away) as a search metric as this could indicate whether the site is relevant for that specific search query. This was mentioned in the 2011 SEO Ranking Factors Report.

Hope that helps

[EGOL]

If search engines are using this data they are certainly only using it for sites competing for the same or similar keywords.

A high bounce rate can be bad or it can be "normal".  It would be bad if your site is offensive (and people run away), it can be bad if your site has irrelevant content for the query, it can be bad if your site has thin content, you can probably think of more.

It can be normal if you have a dictionary site and the searcher finds the word, gets the definition and leaves happily.

THE IMPORTANT THING TO DO..... I believe that everyone should be working to reduce their bounce rate and any webmaster should be able to find improvements.

The best way to do it is to have relevant  links, obviously placed on every page.  For example in the dictionary site your goal should be have linked words within the definition, links to related words adjacent to the definition and links to a few enticing articles along the side.

On an article site you can links within the text to related articles, a "recommended" box of links beside the article and even a few enticing links to "popular" or "related" articles where every one will see them.

Try to reduce your bounce rate by improving your site and making your relevant content visible on every page.