TheMadScientist - 9:54 am on Apr 8, 2011 (gmt 0)

I think if people look at their surfing habits they might see where there's no way Google actually uses it too ... For example, my personal bounce rate is close to, if not, 100% for: w3, wikipedia, expert-exchange, ehow ... I bounce from the 1st two, because I usually find the answer on the 1st page I view, but I bounce from the second two because I can't find the answer on the page.

Sometimes I'll bounce from wikipedia or w3.org right back to the SERPs and click on a site I haven't seen before, just because I have a few minutes and like to see what's new, so even my click-back re-click isn't really 'pindownable'.

Where do I have a lower bounce rate? php.net ... I often have a lower bounce rate, because I usually research a bit more when I have a question, which that does not necessarily mean the 1st page I viewed was incorrect, it may have been, but it also may not have been, because I don't copy and paste the specific 'thing' I'm trying to do into the query, I generally type a query for a known function and see if there's anything related listed if I want something 'the same, only different' or with a slightly different application ... Sometimes the 1st page answers the question, sometimes I see another function that might fit the specific application better, sometimes I feel like reviewing a different function I use occasionally to see if there have been changes since I last used them, which may have been a year or two ago.

There is really no definitive way of knowing what my 'bounce rate' translates to based on my surfing habits, which is what someone has to try to figure out to use it externally, and to even be able to do that, they have access to all the data they need in the first place ... Sometimes I'll click on the references from a wikipedia page, rather than another page on the wikipedia site to get more information on something specific, or make sure the information is accurate, which is a bounce rate of 100% every time it happens ... It doesn't mean the wikipedia page was a 'wrong result', it just means I click somewhere besides another wikipedia page from the wikipedia page ... If someone doesn't click on a subsequent page of a site, it's a bounce, and there are so many reasons people could only view one page, or more than one page, to try and determine which is what and what should rank where because of a view on a single page, or more than one page is, imo, time that could be spent doing many other more productive things, like reformatting the hard drives the bounce rate is stored on, then re-saving it to them from another source, just for fun...

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 9:59 am (utc) on Apr 8, 2011]