Does unrelated traffic with a high bounce rate hurt your site?

[shortbus1662]

Let's say you have a site about a specific type of widgets.

Now let's say while those widgets might wear, say PANTIES, for instance ;), panties are irrelevant to your site's focus on that specific type of widgets.

Let's say that you get 0.1% of your traffic for that unrelated term and the bounce rate is extremely high.

And let's say there are four or five other terms or phrases that are unrelated to the topic of your site with very similar bounce rates.

Do you eliminate those pages of your site so that those visits no longer come in? Monetizing them is really not much of an option and honestly probably not worth the time.

[Pitafi]

hi,

if the bounce rate is very high, say, a user comes on your site and they are totally irrelevant to site,and then went away, that means their bounce rate is high. they click and close the site, i think that they are not hurting your site. Now another point of view, if a user comes on your site and it's looking what your site is all about and finds nothing interesting or any thing that not attracts him,and closes the site it is really harmful for your internet marketing business.

i think that are the only cases.

[norton j radstock]

Bingo....!
Of course it does. Let us surmise that the visitor came from a Google search and bounced straight back to Google -is this not a factor Google might use to determine site popularity for the search.....?

[Robert Charlton]

I'd assume, though, that if the bounces are query specific, and if Google is looking at bounces as a negative factor, then you would only be affected negatively for those irrelevant searches.

[shortbus1662]

I've been ranking for these same terms for quite awhile, like at least a year or two despite the bounce rate.

If any penalty was term or phrase specific that would be fine.

If any penalty was site specific, then I would not be fine with that.

That is the million dollar question for me right now.

I guess I am wondering if google is using bounce rate as an overall penalty from google search data, analytics data, or any other collected data.

No one will be able to say for sure I guess, but I would imagine someone here has a pretty good idea.

[tangor]

Exit/Time on site... is that a metric? Only reason I ask is Google gives me a lot of bad intel in searches and I hold no grudges, I just vacate the site that was not appropriate for my term and look elsewhere. Surely they aren't tracking THAT? (Serious question... never looked at it that way. I look at in/out visits as something I need to do to keep 'em on the site.

[norton j radstock]

if Google is looking at bounces as a negative factor, then you would only be affected negatively for those irrelevant searches.

Exactly -thus the results on Google become progressively more relevant.

I am wondering if google is using bounce rate as an overall penalty from google search data

I don't think of this as a penalty -merely one of the likely factors Google would use to increase search relevance.

[shortbus1662]

I don't think of this as a penalty -merely one of the likely factors Google would use to increase search relevance.

I would agree if applied ONLY to that search term. If applied to the site as a whole, then it would be a penalty.

[Rosalind]

I think this comes firmly under the category of "almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your site". In other words, if they did track this and apply it as an automatic filter, the potential for abuse would be huge.