Can search engines lower our bounce rate?
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Before anything else, what is a bounce rate? It has nothing to do with the spherical humans depicted in the animated movie Wall-E. It’s another way for Google to say our blogs or sites are not making the grade. 
Specifically, it tells us how many pages a visitor to our site browses per visit. It is expressed in percentage and the lower it is, the better.
ReapMoneyOnline recently crashed and we have to start afresh. We thought it would be a good time to monitor our traffic data in Google Analytics, taking a close look at RMO’s bounce rate. So we culled data from August 10 to August 20 and here they are…
To have something for comparison, we underligned the entries from EntreCard (this should not be construed in any other way) in red. Data from the search engine were underligned in green. As we can see, the bounce rates for visitors coming from the search engines are significantly lower, with Google the lowest.
This is not a scientific research but it should give us an idea on how to lower our bounce rates, if we are inclined to do so. It is also heartening to know that visitors from Google have a liking for poking around our sites since we can stack the cards in our favor with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Is this observation repeated in other blogs or websites?
No. 1 — August 28th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Bounce rate is an interesting one. how do we know what is a good acceptable bounce rate and what is not?
I guess we would all strive for a bounce rate of 0% but is this possible?
No. 2 — August 28th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Very interesting. Bounce rate is one of those things that is hard to understand. I have had similar experiences that those coming from the search engines do typically have a lower bounce rate. My thoughts on this are that they are specifically looking for something related to the blog, where someone that follows a link from another site may have just acted on impulse and doesn’t want to take the time to read at that very moment. At least, thats my theory
Jasons last blog post..Using Yahoo! Siteexplorer To Identify Niche Markets
No. 3 — August 29th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
That’s what I also noticed in my analytics. Those that are from search engines are significantly lower than the ones from Entrecard. Having similar theory with Jason, these people from search engines are really looking for answers. Contrary to those referred from entrecard, they might just visit to drop a card or get credits.
I could be wrong but that’s my 2 cents.
simplyjacys last blog post..Hell’s Kitchen at Home
No. 4 — August 29th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
maybe the battle for keyword is getting tough
off the topic:
i notice the plugins folder of this blog is not protected, check this
minors last blog post..New Max Payne Movie Posters
No. 5 — August 30th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Great informative site you have here. I’m just scratching the surface of the blog world so I like reading about all this stuff.
I’m going to add your URL to my blog.
polly hickss last blog post..Tick, Tick, Tick
No. 6 — August 30th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Nice post… and very informative site.. the people in search engines are really looking for information. I am not much familiar with entrecard and have just signed up .
No. 7 — September 1st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I just got onto entrecard. My traffic went way up, but my bounce rate did too. The bounce rate has hit a level that’s really pretty ridiculous. Very few people seem to be interested in the actual content.
I’d say it’s my content, but people coming in from other areas don’t seem to check out quite so quickly.
MrAdventures last blog post..Knights in White Satin Synchrodestiny
No. 8 — September 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
Very informative site.
ask ms recipes last blog post..Hobo Stew
No. 9 — September 8th, 2008 at 8:43 am
I agree that bounce rate is important, but most important on each landing page of your site, not just the home page.
Search traffic that is well-targeted & hits a great landing page tends to be the highest, since they want answers to a specific question (assuming your page answers those questions, of course).
And casual social networking type traffic, can be wonderful or just no-conversion, non-reading, casual traffic.
Important stat to track!
~ ElizabethPW
Elizabeth Potts Weinsteins last blog post..Bank Fraud: What If You Find Fraud in Your Checking Account?
No. 10 — September 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Blogs usually have several articles displayed on the front page. People mostly don’t need to open new pages to read recent posts. Maybe that’s one reason why social networks increase our bounce rate.
No. 11 — June 12th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
The bounce rate is becoming less relevant for blogs because people use social bookmarking sites to get to interesting content, read it and go back to the bookmarking site to get another link.
That is why I think that people are no longer surfing the web but rather bouncing through the web.