How Much Does a Bad Bounce Rate Hurt Your Rankings?

[Josh]

Sorry Josh not a chance. I have been involved in SEO since day one. They have no access to your server stats. Not possible. Please cite sources if you think otherwise. They don't track back buttons as far as I know. I have hundreds of sites on page one and it has absolutely nothing to do with time spent on a page.

That's certainly one take on it. If I might make a suggestion, you may want to tone it down a notch or two.

Google may very well not have access to your server stats, google does have 100% access to their own information. If a user is searching for "how to change oil in a motorcycle" then google knows very well when the user is on their site (google.com). If a user searches for "how to change oil in a motorcycle" and visits a site, google can tell when they come back and come to the next site down the list of search results.

To your comment of having hundreds of sites "on page one" and that "it has absolutely nothing to do with time spent on a page", google definitely disagrees with you on that point. Google can absolutely measure it. I take it sense you've been around "since day one", you're familiar with how cookies can be used to log and track information? Google recently had an update to their privacy policy and it may be a good opportunity for folks to review it:
Privacy Policy â€" Policies & Principles â€" Google
Advertising privacy FAQ â€" Policies & Principles â€" Google

Every time a user goes to google.com and puts in a search then reviews the information, they're giving all of that information to google, including how long folks are spending on the site. In fact, they may very well still have a cookie in their browser that is telling the big G what pages they are visiting on your site while they're there.

In fact, let's take a look at another interesting piece of the puzzle:

Google Chrome vs. Internet Explorer: Microsoft's Browser Loses Weekend Download Battle

Google Overtakes Internet Explorer As Most Popular Browser - Business Insider

Google Chrome is the browser of choice for most internet users at this point. Google absolutely has access to the information running through the browser they designed themselves and that attaches itself to a google account.

Whether you believe it or not, your rankings have been impacted by how long folks have stayed on your site and that's a trend that is likely to continue as the big G has a constant push towards providing a quality user experience by driving search engines users to quality sites that they stay on.

 

[djs]

Google can absolutely measure it. I take it sense you've been around "since day one", you're familiar with how cookies can be used to log and track information?
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Technically somewhat true, but misleading since google cannot read your sites cookies. Most cookies don't bother to track much data at all (you can open them and read them if you really want to know).

Toolbars are probably the biggest way google (and yahoo, bing, and whoever else) tracks movements. Pages with google adnonsense help as well, since they can track you through the google ads that way (and hence through the google cookies).

I doubt google cares much about page depth. If it did, wikipedia would probably be near the bottom for everything, since it is a one page wonder for most searches.

Dan
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[Josh]

I doubt google cares much about page depth. If it did, wikipedia would probably be near the bottom for everything, since it is a one page wonder for most searches.
[/LEFT]

That's a good example, but I think it actually furthers the point. If google (watching from it's litany of angles) sees that people search for "X" and the find it on Wikipedia, then spend some time on wikipedia, then move onto something else, it can reasonably presume they found what they were looking for. If the average user spends three times as long on wikipedia before returning to google as they do on any of the other search results, google will likely draw a connection. Just by the fact you're going back to Google they can reasonably infer how long the average user stays on a given page.

We're also ignoring another major issue regarding the bounce rate, if you're getting traffic to your site, but they aren't sticking around, how compelling is your message? Are you getting what you want from their visit?

 

[knocker]

Sorry Josh I will tone it down. LOL. Didnt realize how it sounded till I read it later. Even if google can read your bounce rate it would be a very small part of the ranking factor. Of all of the SEO information I keep up with bounce rate is rarely mentioned. You are also assuming the surfer is coming back to google search which isnt always the case. Right now inbound links from social media sights are the best way to rank from my own experience. I will also assume bounce rate can be high even on some of the highest quality sites. For example if I am at the Drudge Report I will scan the first few paragraphs then I am out. yet it is one of the highest traffic sites on the net.

 

[Guest]

Google has stated even with analitics they do read the data but not individually. Site statistics are GA are not used against you ( look for a matt cirrus video ).

Think about it this way. Google's goal is to provide searchers with the most relevant results right? Well what if you are searching for the definition of a word. The most relevant site will show you the definition right away and then you leave. Also ecommerce sites.

These sites will naturally have a high bounce because they are so relevant. Google is aware and bounce rate has 0-no effect ( as well as all other GA stats ) on your rankings.

Sorry I don't want to look for the source but its out there. Trust

 

[Josh]

Sorry Josh I will tone it down. LOL. Didnt realize how it sounded till I read it later. Even if google can read your bounce rate it would be a very small part of the ranking factor. Of all of the SEO information I keep up with bounce rate is rarely mentioned. You are also assuming the surfer is coming back to google search which isnt always the case. Right now inbound links from social media sights are the best way to rank from my own experience. I will also assume bounce rate can be high even on some of the highest quality sites. For example if I am at the Drudge Report I will scan the first few paragraphs then I am out. yet it is one of the highest traffic sites on the net.

I think there are a pile of other metrics that can certainly outweigh the bounce rate, but google can definitely get a pretty accurate idea of how long the average user stays on a site for a given search result.

To your point about Drudge, let's back up. If you go to your non-chrome browser and just punch in the site, Google probably wouldn't know about the visitor path. By contrast, if you google "drudge" and go to drudge report, they can then find out if you pop in and out. Two very different situations. Even at that, we're talking about an old site with lots of indexed content, backlinks, and it's a PR7 site. Do you have a single PR7 site in your portfolio? I think my highest is a PR3.

Quality content and backlinks are undoubtedly going to trump bounce rate, but Google can definitely get a pretty good idea of what the bounce rate is like on a website, with or without analytics. They can certainly evaluate how long people wait between clicking on the different search results and when the user moves on to a different search term altogether.
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Google has stated even with analitics they do read the data but not individually. Site statistics are GA are not used against you ( look for a matt cirrus video ).

Do you mean Matt Cutts?

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Right now inbound links from social media sights are the best way to rank from my own experience.

what kind of niches are u seeing this effect in?

 

[knocker]

I wouldn't think google would factor something it couldn't fact equally with every site.

 

[Guest]

I think there are a pile of other metrics that can certainly outweigh the bounce rate, but google can definitely get a pretty accurate idea of how long the average user stays on a site for a given search result.

To your point about Drudge, let's back up. If you go to your non-chrome browser and just punch in the site, Google probably wouldn't know about the visitor path. By contrast, if you google "drudge" and go to drudge report, they can then find out if you pop in and out. Two very different situations. Even at that, we're talking about an old site with lots of indexed content, backlinks, and it's a PR7 site. Do you have a single PR7 site in your portfolio? I think my highest is a PR3.

Quality content and backlinks are undoubtedly going to trump bounce rate, but Google can definitely get a pretty good idea of what the bounce rate is like on a website, with or without analytics. They can certainly evaluate how long people wait between clicking on the different search results and when the user moves on to a different search term altogether.
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Do you mean Matt Cutts?

LoL yeah I do stupid cell phone key board

But I have read that Google does not pool individual data from GA for websites to use against webmasters. They do use group dta to improve search though

 

[Josh]

LoL yeah I do stupid cell phone key board

But I have read that Google does not pool individual data from GA for websites to use against webmasters. They do use group dta to improve search though

The reason why I asked was that Matt Cutts is a confirmed liar.

For some reason folks that use GA and are using BH techniques are more likely to get their sites banned than the ones that don't. I prefer to use statcounter or a hosted option. No reason to give Google more info than I have to.