Bounce rate and SERPS

[realmaverick]

I'm in a bit of a catch 22.

One one of my download websites, the biggest entrance pages are the download pages themselves. Peoples searches are quite specific. Users don't have to register, in order to download. So they click download and often leave, once they've got what they come for. Causing a higher bounce rate than I'd like.

I feel bounce rate, might be a small part of the ranking factor. It wouldn't make sense, for Google not to use the metric. I'd like to reduce mine.

One possibility, would be to take them to an intermediate download page. But that would mean adding hundreds of thousands of extra pages. Low quality extra pages at that.

Perhaps I could simply noindex these pages from the start and disallow via robots.txt

I do all the usual stuff like show related content etc.

Any better suggestions?

[tedster]

Do you think people click back to the Google results that brought them to them page in the first place? That's the only kind of bounce I can see Google watching - and we shouldn't call it a bounce, we should call is a "click back" because it is a decent indicator of not being happy with the result.

For any other kind of single page-view "bounce", Google has often said that the signal is much too noisy - and it is.

[tedster]

A further thought - isn't a click on the download link a second URL from your site? In that case, it's not a bounce at all, no matter how your stats report that particular visit.

[realmaverick]

Ted, in Analytics, some pages for example, report a 30% bounce rate. These pages are the "Download" pages. A bounce, I've always understood, was when a person exists from the page they landed on.

I've always assumed, analytics counts a bounce, when the above occurs.

The download button is a URL, but it just delivers a file, the user remains on the page they landed on. So I'd assume, it would still class as a bounce, if the user were to then visit FB for example.

[TheMadScientist]

And that's exactly why a 'Bounce' is noisy and Google probably will not ever try to count it, but a 'Click Back' is a different story...

There's a huge distinction between a bounce and a click-back.

One (click-back ... imo it's likely actually click-back, re-click or re-search they use) you can get a bit of useable info from, the other (bounce rate) you basically can't.

<rant>At no one in particular, definitely not you realmaverick ... It's absolutely amazing to me the number of people who don't like to have a semantic distinction in terminology made, then wonder why they 'don' get it' when someone says Google can't use one signal, but can use another ... Unless a specific terminology is used to describe different situations then most people aren't going to have a clue about what's going on ... It's like Penalty and Re-Ranking ... If people think they're the same, imo, the chances are they'll never really understand or be able to effectively communicate what happened with Panda.</rant>

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 3:13 am (utc) on Mar 31, 2011]

[realmaverick]

Analytics records what? I'd be pretty disappointed if the 30% is purely from back clicks.

[TheMadScientist]

Analytics records bounce rate...

They don't use Bounce Rate generically, because it's too noisy ... The only portion of a Bounce Rate they can use, imo, is a Click-Back, and then, again imo, it has to be coupled with 're-click' or 're-search' rate to be very telling, and even those signals would likely have to 'balanced' among a quantity of users and pages on the same SERP to make any type of signal telling.

IOW: Click-back, re-click in a set of SERPs which is 'out of line' for one page would probably be a signal they could use, but then it takes the entire SERP to create a signal ... Meaning what happens wrt click-back, re-click on your page is not the only factor used to determine if your page is ranked correctly, imo.

There's a very small sub-set of bounce rate that has to do with a visitor clicking-back and then re-clicking or re-searching, which when combined with the same rates of other 'closely related results', like in the same set of SERPs, I could see them actually using, beyond that, I think you should completely ignore bounce rate as a ranking signal...

[tedster]

some pages for example, report a 30% bounce rate. These pages are the "Download" pages.

30% is a pretty darned low bounce rate on most sites. I would have no concern whatsoever.

A bounce, I've always understood, was when a person exists from the page they landed on. I've always assumed, analytics counts a bounce, when the above occurs.

The download button is a URL, but it just delivers a file, the user remains on the page they landed on. So I'd assume, it would still class as a bounce, if the user were to then visit FB for example.

There is no technical definition for "page", only for URL. Google Analytics, for instance, allows you to create a "virtual event" for an action taken on your site. You could tag that download script if you wanted. Because it really is a conversion, that kind of thing makes sense if your analytics package allows it.

You are essentially overly concerned. Even as currently measured, your bounce rate is well within a healthy low range for most sites. And as we've already discussed, Google is not likely to be using bounce rate in the ranking algorithm.

I think you can move on to the rest of your work. And congratulations on what sounds like a pretty successful site.

[TheMadScientist]

Here's where 'Bounce-Rate' as a ranking factor gets 'BLEEPING Noisy' ... I think in some cases 30% sounds too low ... To me it sounds like you make people visit more pages than they need to before finding the answer ... Obviously, the landing page didn't satisfy the entire 'need', because if it did people would not need to visit any other page on the site ... I've got one up to +90% for some months (yes, 90% bounce rate), which makes me happy, because I know the queries used to find the page, so I know based on the query, the page content, time on page and bounce rate I did my job of defining the page right and Google did theirs by sending people to exactly the right page on the site for people to find the answer they were looking for...

They really can't use bounce rate as a whole, imo.

[TheMadScientist]

Here's a question I would love the answer to wrt bounce rate being a ranking factor, from those who believe it's something Google uses.

How could a 1 page site ever rank?
They do rank, so how?

Their bounce rate is 100%

---

I'm about tired of hearing about bounce rate as a factor and I'm really tired of posting to try and dispel the myths, but let me post a little knowledge I have since you have to have access to stats from some interlinked sites to know this and some people may not.

I've seen, not an overly small percentage of times, where a visitor will land on Site A, click a link to Site B, click back to Site A, click a link to Site C, then visit Site B again later, directly ... No click involved, except maybe on a bookmark ... Going by bounce rate, or even click-back, re-click rate as a 'singular signal' Site C was the correct answer, but the reality is Site B was the correct answer ... Bounce Rate is too noisy and too 'undefinable' for them to use, because there are too many different reasons a person 'bounces' or even clicks back and clicks again ... There are a very limited number of situations where click-back, re-click may become more reliable, but it's only when there's a 'one of these things is not like the others, one of these things is just not the same' situation which takes the analysis of a SERP as a whole to determine ... The engineers at Google and other major SEs are smart enough to know what I'm saying, and have even stated repeatedly they do not use bounce rate, because it's too noisy ... Believe it or not: They're telling the truth...

[deadsea]

There are several mitigating factors:

High bounce rates are expected in certain verticals. Others who rank for the same thing will also probably have high bounce rates.

It sounds like users are finding what they want from your site. Google likely measures bounce rate by the number of people that hit the back button and click on something else or refine their search criteria. If people are finding what they want, then you want have a problem by bounce rate measured this way.

Google probably also pays attention to "time on site". For a download site, that may be high because of the download itself.

I also have a site with a 70% bounce rate. Its because users typically find all the information they came for in a single page, then they leave. I'm not worried about it. It has had consistent growth over 5 years both in brand and SEO. It now gets 3 million visits a month. Its never been hit by a penalty, and (knock on wood) will continue to be seen as a value add in the SERPs by Google.

[deadsea]

I should add that I also try to *increase* bounce rate sometimes on the site because it is better for users or my bottom line.

First: I had a problem a few years ago where Google was sending long tail traffic to the incorrect page. I had to implement some anchor text interlinking for some of those long tail phrases to get Google to feature the correct page in the SERPs. That increased bounce rate because many of those users used to have to click around to find what they wanted after landing. Now they find what they want on the landing page and leave, but more actually get to the right place.

Second: Making ads more prominent increases the bounce rate as measured by Google Analytics, but sometimes you'd really like more revenue.

[rlange]

TheMadScientist wrote:
I think in some cases 30% sounds too low ... To me it sounds like you make people visit more pages than they need to before finding the answer ... Obviously, the landing page didn't satisfy the entire 'need', because if it did people would not need to visit any other page on the site ...

It may be that realmaverick is tracking clicks on his download links as page views in Google Analytics. If a particular page is exactly what the visitor is looking for, that would skew the bounce rate toward the low end.

Are you tracking clicks as page views, realmaverick?

deadsea wrote:
Google probably also pays attention to "time on site". For a download site, that may be high because of the download itself.

I hope not, especially in the case of a download page. A visitor really only needs to stay on the page long enough to initiate the download.

Ideally, download pages can have a high bounce rate, short time spent on page, and still be highly relevant.

[netmeg]

*I* pay attention to bounce rates, depending on the page, because there are some pages I want people to take in, and if the bounce rate is significantly above 40%, then I know I have to work on it a bit. But it's all relative, and depends on my goad for that particular page, and if I know that, I have to think that Google does too.

I have sites where bounce rate is *extremely* high, because the information that people are looking for is in a big box above the fold - the date and time of an important event, say - and once they find it, they leave. That page does perfectly fine, and ranks #1 for at least 200 search phrases according to Raven Tools, and a few dozen more phrases for which it doesn't even deserve to rank. Been that way for years. I'm not changing it.

I wouldn't worry about bounce rates on a download page.

[realmaverick]

It may be that realmaverick is tracking clicks on his download links as page views in Google Analytics. If a particular page is exactly what the visitor is looking for, that would skew the bounce rate toward the low end.

Are you tracking clicks as page views, realmaverick?

No I don't track clicks as views. Each page shows other related downloads so often the user goes to get other related stuff. Average time on site is 6 minutes for this particular site.