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I recently launched my web application and set up google analytics to monitor it. For some weird reason google analytics shows a 49.7 percent bounce rate - I'm quite suprised as to why and how is this possible.

My web application works well - I've never been bounced off even once whenever I visit it from any browser. What's going on I have no idea what to look out for here?

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  • I was totally going to vote this closed for not-sysadmin-related, but on second thought, I won't, because the terminology is such that it might help someone else in the future Mar 15, 2010 at 9:21
  • I can see nothing in this question to make it appear even remotely like admin stuff. Clear-cut web promotion issue and a failure to read the Analytics docs, resulting in a lack of understanding of the terminology used. Mar 15, 2010 at 10:18

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Bounce rate is when a visitor just visits a single page and then moves on to another site instead of visiting another page on your site. It's quite normal.

Citing the Wikipedia article (there is no industry standard for this) a visitor can bounce by:

  • Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site
  • Closing an open window or tab
  • Typing a new URL
  • Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site
  • Session timeout
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  • Indeed. Bounce rate isn't people getting kicked off your site, it's people who leave your site immediately Mar 15, 2010 at 9:22
  • I'm really curious, how my typical visit of a website would count: I visit the home page, from there, I open several links in new tabs, then I read all tabs, and finally close them all (including the home page/or maybe I reuse the home page tab to browse somewhere else)? Would this be bouncing or not? Mar 15, 2010 at 11:03
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50% bounce is not bad, you know.

Do you know what the bounce rate MEANS?

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81986

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

So, half of the peopel come, visit the page that they initialy see, then disappear.

This can have many reasons. Depending on the site, 50% may acutally be a VERY good number.

Reasons for the bounce?

  • Bad search engine / seo traffic (people come, but your site is not really what they wanted).
  • People just look around (visit the first 5 entries)
  • Something like a blog, where people may come x times per day, look at the frontpage, read the article and disappear.

All that is not really a desaster.

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  • Ouch sorry bout that for a while I thought bounce rate was when you come to a site and it doesn't load .. I assumed it meant something like email bounces :-S - silly me :)
    – Ali
    Mar 15, 2010 at 8:53

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