How Google Analytics calculates bounce rate

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Every page on your website should have your Google Analytics tracking ID in the code. When someone visits your website, this code fires and triggers a session. If a visitor leaves your site without further interaction, the session expires, and their visit is classed as a bounce. If they click through to another page or perform an action that triggers an event, like filling out a contact form, the code fires again and tells GA that it’s not a bounce. However, things aren’t always this simple because many things affect if and how the code is fired. Your data is skewed one way or another by: Ad blockers. These usually prevent tracking codes from firing, so you won’t see these users in your analytics at all. Slow-loading pages: Impatient users might bounce before the tracking code loads.


Session timeouts: There are multiple ways sessions can expire even if the user plans to engage with indian phone number the website further. Improper tracking setup: We’ll look into that later. Is bounce rate important? Bounce rate is an important metric. It’s useful for assessing user engagement and indicating that there might be something wrong with your tracking setup. But it’s also an overrated and often misused metric. To prove this point, try sorting the campaigns below from best to worst. For simplicity, assume that we spent the same on each of them and that the quality of leads (signups) is equal. 01 bounce rate I used to give a slightly more elaborate version of this task to interviewees for marketing positions.



Most considered bounce rate when making their decision. In reality, bounce rate doesn’t matter here. What we care about is ROI. You can tell the ROI by comparing the percentage of users each campaign brought with the respective percentage of sign ups. But we can also calculate the conversion rates: Campaign #1: 0.07% Campaign #2: 0.22% Campaign #3: 0.94% Campaign #4: 1.03% Campaign #5: 5.02% Campaign #6: 0.79% So, from best to worst: 5 > 4 > 3 > 6 > 2 > 1. The point here is that campaigns #6 and #1 have the best bounce rates, but they’re terrible at directly converting the users. Differences between bounce rate, exit rate, and dwell time Many people confuse these three metrics, and some even use them interchangeably.