Defining bounce rate

Does it include clicking external links?

[D4vid]

If I have a single page website with links to external websites, is a user following one of these links bouncing? Or is bouncing only typing in another web address or hitting the back button?

[cgrantski]

The gist of bouncing is leaving your site as soon as they arrive, without seeing anything else. Bounce has negative connotations - it's something that you don't want to happen. If your page has links and you want people to click on them, and they do so while only seeing one page of your site, I wouldn't call that a bounce because they're doing what you want them to do.

Technically, it's a single page visit. But a bounce more or less means rejecting your site. And it doesn't sound like what you're describing. Clicking on those links sounds like a successful visit.

Stats programs will however list those visits as bounce. This is one of those situations where the stats programs are, well, only computer programs.