What causes a high bounce rate?

robertman11

Bad design is a big one. Not the information the user was seeking is another. Music or video that auto plays make users flee like no other.

You need to present the info and then have supporting, relevant links to other items to keep the user clicking. For example, Related Posts.

12 years ago

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angie828

Pages that do not load fast is a high one!

12 years ago

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Beverly

Bad design is a big one. Not the information the user was seeking is another. Music or video that auto plays make users flee like no other.

You need to present the info and then have supporting, relevant links to other items to keep the user clicking. For example, Related Posts.

I'm a huge fan of surfing the 'related posts' links. If i'm on a blog and see a list along side or under and there is something interesting, I will click through and stay on the site so much longer. It's nice when people link to their own stuff on blog and have taken time to write about the subject more than that one article.

12 years ago

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Miken34

Sites that do not have a lot of useful info on them will give you a high bounce rate.

12 years ago

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Griffin

Some sites target keywords that don't reflect the true content of the page. And, they do so, for devious reasons, just to rank high. And, when the search engine user clicks through and sees the content of the page is not what they wanted, they will click back or shut the tab. That's a bounce.

12 years ago

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angie828

Sites that do not have a lot of useful info on them will give you a high bounce rate.

Tell me about it. THere are plenty of sites like that online that do not even deserve to be sites.

12 years ago

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Beverly

Tell me about it. THere are plenty of sites like that online that do not even deserve to be sites.

I keep waiting for Google to clean those sites out of search. And, with every algorithm update, many disappear but just as many appear as webmasters find loopholes around the restrictions.

12 years ago

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MikeQ

Yes, this is the way SEO works.. because Google has to consider around 200 factors in SEO... if any site has bounce rate problem but other signals are strong then it would rank high as well....

12 years ago

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Beverly

Yes, this is the way SEO works.. because Google has to consider around 200 factors in SEO... if any site has bounce rate problem but other signals are strong then it would rank high as well....

Maybe it's only one small factor for Google's algorithm, but I've read on Bing Webmaster tools how they consider it a major factor.

12 years ago

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sunil0021

What is bounce rate :

It’s a percentage of visitors who arrived at a website, and left it without navigating or visiting a second page. The main idea behind designing Bounce Rate was to check whether a person is receiving correct audience. Let us sum up the meaning of Bounce Rate, I Came, I learn and Left.

What causes a high bounce rate:

Purchasing fake visitors
Bad content
Page load speed
Site design
Asking people to visit your site who is not interested in your stuff etc. etc.

These are the mail causes according to me and Google !
- Sunil Bishnoi

12 years ago

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angie828

I keep waiting for Google to clean those sites out of search. And, with every algorithm update, many disappear but just as many appear as webmasters find loopholes around the restrictions.

I wish that they would all disappear. IT is very annoying and agrivating when webmasters find these loopholes.

12 years ago

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pu67pal

1. Very slow page load speed
2. Not suitable content in visitor perspective
3. Bad design, low quality content, Too many Ads

11 years ago

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soferauto

If the visitor expect to see sky pictures and find out SEO I am afraid will instantly go back to google, if he expect to see new things about bounce rate and find out the exact article he read yesterday will go back in seconds, if the page give him new information (from the first paragraph) then I bet he will stay and read'em all...

Design??? 2014 trends will be about a very complicate simplicity so better is to choose simplicity from the beginning.
Page load?? yes, but do not ask about performance if you do not have good results on page speed tests.
Ads? Everybody use ads, sometime ads represent that things visitor want to see, on the other hand you have full control of the page when there is no ads.

Finally, the quality of visitors determine a lot of % bounce rate so the way of promoting your site will be a decisive factor.

11 years ago

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Beverly

If the visitor expect to see sky pictures and find out SEO I am afraid will instantly go back to google, if he expect to see new things about bounce rate and find out the exact article he read yesterday will go back in seconds, if the page give him new information (from the first paragraph) then I bet he will stay and read'em all...

That's a really good point. If someone clicks through from Google expecting to see one thing but is confronted with something else they are not likely to stay. And, I think sometimes pages rank high for a keyword that was not targeted or maybe Google wrongly classified the page as being relevant. Or possibly, the webmaster targeted popular keywords but didn't bother making his page about that subject. In any case, it's likely to cause a website visitor to want to leave the site quickly.

11 years ago

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twilight

Number one in my book would have to be slow loading pages. If a page does not load fast for me then I usually leave it quickly.

11 years ago

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Beverly

Number one in my book would have to be slow loading pages. If a page does not load fast for me then I usually leave it quickly.

I will almost always shut a page down or hit the back button if a page does not load in a few seconds. Even with my slow internet, there is no excuse for slow loading pages.

11 years ago

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soferauto

That's a really good point. If someone clicks through from Google expecting to see one thing but is confronted with something else they are not likely to stay. And, I think sometimes pages rank high for a keyword that was not targeted or maybe Google wrongly classified the page as being relevant. Or possibly, the webmaster targeted popular keywords but didn't bother making his page about that subject. In any case, it's likely to cause a website visitor to want to leave the site quickly.

Thanks. And like I said above if you promote your site to inappropriate places, your traffic is far away for being targeted so again, bounce rate will be bad. What is your opinion regard this?

11 years ago

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spotondot

I will almost always shut a page down or hit the back button if a page does not load in a few seconds. Even with my slow internet, there is no excuse for slow loading pages.

And, anyone would be this way.

If I look on Google for a search term and then find a place that might have something related and then visit the site but it does not feature the information I will, then I will just leave. I'm not going to stay on the site and browse if they don't have what I'm looking for.

11 years ago

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Beverly

Thanks. And like I said above if you promote your site to inappropriate places, your traffic is far away for being targeted so again, bounce rate will be bad. What is your opinion regard this?

Sometimes, when I click onto a page from Google search, it is not in any way related to the keywords it was ranking for. And, it can eb annoying to waste time in that way. With all the improvements Google has made to it's search engine algorithm to make searches more relevant, this still happens.

11 years ago

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tionna

Sites that look cluttered drive me crazy. If I can not find what I am looking for right away I leave the site.

11 years ago

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ultimate

Bounce rate as defined by @sunil0021 can be caused by various reasons.
Slow page loads are a headache. The one that I have got now, help appreciated. Even if you got golden content visitors won't get a chance to see it unless you show it (real quick).

Question : What happens with one page sites (like 4everyone) ?
I wonder how the bounce rate of sites get calculated which only have one page content. And there are several such sites which load content via AJAX and don't need users to click a link & go to a different page.
Won't their bounce rate be 100%.

11 years ago

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ralph101

I know for me when the page does not load as fast as it should or as fast as I want it to, then I leave.

11 years ago

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barry

People that only visit the site for a short bit. You want to make them as interested as they can be so they stay on your page for a long time.

11 years ago

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elladavidson

SLOW loading sites will cause huge bounce rates.

11 years ago

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Ethan

SLOW loading sites will cause huge bounce rates.

Slow loading sites are not good for search engine ranking either. Though Google doesn't explicitly say that in their TOS but I'm sure it's factored.

11 years ago

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mandy

A page that has too much on it. One that is all jumbled up and cluttered does not appeal to me at all. I usually leave these pages right away.

11 years ago

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LizAnne

A page that has too much on it. One that is all jumbled up and cluttered does not appeal to me at all. I usually leave these pages right away.

Nobody likes looking at a cluttered webpage or blog that is crowded up with too many ads or text blocks. Keep each page simple, refining the content down as you go and excluding any elements that could detract from the professional image of your site.

11 years ago

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Beverly

Bounce rate as defined by @sunil0021 can be caused by various reasons.
Slow page loads are a headache. The one that I have got now, help appreciated. Even if you got golden content visitors won't get a chance to see it unless you show it (real quick).

Question : What happens with one page sites (like 4everyone) ?
I wonder how the bounce rate of sites get calculated which only have one page content. And there are several such sites which load content via AJAX and don't need users to click a link & go to a different page.
Won't their bounce rate be 100%.

The site visitor for 4everyone is bouncing forward to a subdomain of the main site, right? So it would be same as if they saw an interesting link or ad that met a need and clicked on that. It might not be seen as a bad thing with Google. The only thing I read was bad in Bing webmaster guidelines were sites which get bounceback where the person comes in from the search results and then clicks back to search result quickly (after seeing that site content is not what they wanted), rather than clicking forward to leave the site.

11 years ago

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sohail2124

Web Design and Usability
Website Content
Website Navigation
Technical Issues

11 years ago

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Gemison

If I go to a site and it just looks bad or I'm not interested in the first few seconds, I don't mind leaving. Maybe that's the same thing as a bounce back.

11 years ago

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nishantraj

page loading time, low quality content, low quality designing etc.

11 years ago

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msayle

As an internet surfer yourself, you should be able to easily tackle this one. What are some of the reasons YOU bounce from a website? I know for me, it's

1) Page Speed - if the site doesn't load pretty quickly, I'm out.
2) Hard to navigate - if the page is a mess, i'm out.
3) Constant popups - You bother me, i'm out.
4) Too much "bling" - If the page is saturated with ads that look like the Vegas Strip, i'm out.
5) Not finding what I came for - If the headline is "How to find great keywords" and then the content is a cat video - i'm out.

11 years ago

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iftiseo

Well, let me add my views as well.

Poor quality content is the main reason behind a very high Bounce Rate. Irrelevant Post titles is the second biggest reason behind it. Pop-ups are also accounting for it.

By the way, you should apply the official TWEAK by GOOGLE to reduce your Bounce Rate,
Before trying anything related to codes it's very important to know what will be the code doing. So let me explain you in short.

Do you feel that the system or algorithm of Bounce rate is somewhat unfair ?

I mean if someone is looking for a particular thing on google and he finds your post, read it and solve his problem, then its quite natural that he will close your blog coz his work/problem etc is solved. But Wait !!! Google will count it as a Bounce and add it to your Bounce Rate unless and untill the user clicks on any other link.

What should actually be the criteria for Bounce Calculation according to me ?

Well Its simple, I would like to consider a visit as a bounce only if the visitor closes the site after some period of time say 10 seconds or so, that would mean that the visitor doesn't like your content or he fails to find what he was looking for. Don't you think it will be fair ?? I would appreciate comments on this issue.

So this trick/tweak does the same, it will make the visit a bounce only if your site get closed within 10 seconds (you can easily change the time as per your wish). One more thing this code does is, it will discard the visit as bounce once a viewer scrolls the page.

Google's team and others call it as "Adjusted Bounce Rate"

The tweak can be found on my site or on google as well, my post on it is ranked on top. I can't post the tweak here as it's big. If you wan't I can post the link to the tweak....

FRANKLY SPEAKING, My Bounce Rate came down from 60% to 25% using this

11 years ago

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sweetcupcake

I must say that I usually leave a site that is slow loading. I can not stand this at all and usually leave right away.

10 years ago

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blueeyes

Content that is not great will cause bounce rate. I leave pages that do not have content that I am interested in.

10 years ago

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Corzhens

As per the discussions about bounce rate that I had come across, a high bounce rate means the visitor to the site has opened a web page and exited in haste which means he did not read even half the contents of the web page. Obviously that high bounce rate is caused by the contents of the web page in relation to the interest of the visitor. Some visitors have no time to read much and some visitors have the propensity to look for details. But if the high bounce rate persists then that has something to do with the contents of the particular web page.

6 years ago

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SEOClerks

What causes a high bounce rate?

What causes a high bounce rate?

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