Bounce rates affects ranking!

[cooluks]

Bounce rates can really affect SERPs what's your share about it?

[Onestop]

No doubt. I like it. Keeps keyword spamming down and relevance up.

[AussieWebmaster]

There is no open agreement on them using bounce rates but it definitely makes sense that it should be considered

[jag]

If there is an increase in bounce rate from organic clicks the user value of the page can be dropped and this can take charge on SERP of the page constant if others do better than you and to avoid this you can add interesting posts or resources relevent to the page so that there are chances for users to click those and hence bounce rate can reduce

Best,

[Onestop]

I recently read an article about this subject. I can't find it to post link but perhaps someone else read the same thing. Basically an SEO blogger made 3 or 4 different pages and optimized each according to different leagues of thought on SEO. One of the pages was full of unique content in order to keep bounce rate low and time on page high. Long story short each page ended up ranking highly, but the page in question held its value longer than the others. The theory was that the combination of relevant/unique content, bounce rate, & time on page were making the page look good to the engines.

[jag]

Its simple, no confusions with detailed explanation

Right keywords for right content with right related internal links i.e., suitable to the subject. You can reduce to 35 to 40%, which is very normal

[Mark]

Can't remember where I read this, but I thought engines were starting to rely less on bounce rate - thinking that people search for something, find the relevant information on the right page, and leave.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Avinash Kaushik (the web analytics guy working for g analytics ) says bounce rate is defined as either people leaving your website after only viewing one page *or* as people who only stay on your website for a small amount of time (usually less than 5 seconds).

If I was Google and tried to use bounce rate, I would probably not use "who only saw one page on the site", but rather something along the lines of "who stayed on your website for a small amount of time" to determine if a result was irrelevant to a user's search.

(just saying, because I think what Mark read would only apply to one definition of a bounce rate that a search engine doesnt really have to stick to)

Also, I wouldnt be surprised if they further distinguished, because people such as myself visit some great blogs all the time and "bounce" immediately, because they were just so hungry for new content on that *great* blog that they couldnt help but go there for the 5th time in a day ;-). Obviously this might increase the bounce rate of a site, though (in such a case) it's actually a sign for great content.

[jag]

Hopefully you will be counted as a returning visitor of the day and the time spent will be added to retool bounce rate, if calculated just as it should be

Originally Posted by NewKidOnTheBlock

Also, I wouldnt be surprised if they further distinguished, because people such as myself visit some great blogs all the time and "bounce" immediately, because they were just so hungry for new content on that *great* blog that they couldnt help but go there for the 5th time in a day ;-). Obviously this might increase the bounce rate of a site, though (in such a case) it's actually a sign for great content.

Best,

[AussieWebmaster]

personally I think bounce rtaes are being considered in the algorithm these days... though not as highly as the branding change - when will Google stop screwing around with the algorithm - people are slowly getting pissed off with them and the magic is dropping - a good new search engine has a chance right now - especially if it launches through Twitter

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Hey Aussiewebmaster,

if I remember correctly you deal quite a lot with international SEO, right? Just because you mentioned the branding change (I assume you mean the one suggest by Aaron Wall), I've been wondering if the stuff I can see in the German and the French SERPs might be what the English language SERPs might look like when that branding change is rolled out further.

A lot of time when I looked at a set of SERPs in English, French and German (one keyword/theme, but typing it in in those 3 different languages) I was surprised that in the English language SERPs a small fish normally seemed to stand a better chance (though technically there's more competition). The reason, I thought this was that the German/French SERPs were always packed with "authoritative domains" that had crappy subpages rank (I know this effect exists in the English SERPs, too, but in the German/French SERPs it seemed to be a lot stronger).

Ive been wondering if...the German/French SERPs might actually give one a look into the future of the English SERPs (in case that brand algorithm is rolled out further)...

I havent really thought much about whether it is simply an algorithm thing (maybe most smaller businesses in Germany simply not knowing much about link building and thus the differences in the algorithm could simply put down to the input of pages that are thrown into g's algorithm) or if G's algorithm in the German/French SERPs might have been favoring "brand" sites (or well high authoritative domains) over small sites the whole time - perhaps because they dont have any people capable of doing handjobs in German/French @ G...

Any idea?

[jag]

There are lesser quality sites in German/French language compared to English and more you find and get backlinks, much better you rank. There would be tough times to find right German/French theme related backlinks

[jag]

Yes, magic is dropping - apt lines ranking factors can be tweeked according to users preferences that relates bounce rate added with time spent per page and these would help a lot on ethical SEO too

Waiting for right competitor for Google so user and web optimizers experiance would be cool

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

personally I think bounce rtaes are being considered in the algorithm these days... though not as highly as the branding change - when will Google stop screwing around with the algorithm - people are slowly getting pissed off with them and the magic is dropping - a good new search engine has a chance right now - especially if it launches through Twitter

[AussieWebmaster]

NKOTB - it is definitely not that the Germans don't know link building - I think many branding instances lie in the US as the mother corp or even the main area for branding

That and the language differences

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

thanks for the reply AussieWebmaster. I didn't really understand what you meant by "many branding instances lie in the US as the mother corp or even the main area for branding"? I assume you did not mean that many (mother) corporations spend their branding budget mostly on the American market, but have (daugher (exp?)) sites in Germany/the German SERPs...?

[baranbuffet]

I don't think Bounce Rate affect your Ranking , Bounce rate Is imp for your Product which you want to sell

[maneetpuri]

Hi

How Google can gather the bounce rate data of all the websites in its database until and unless they all have analytics script in it and if not then how Google can include the bounce rate data in its algorithm to affect a website ranking thru its algorithm?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Google toolbar, etc. they have more data sources than google analytics. I assume if you got a site with enough traffic even if it doesn't have Google analytics implemented, then some of the people surfing it will be using the google toolbar. And again, if the traffic is high enough they could have a significant data sample from which to draw conclusions - many more than only bounce rate..time of stay on site, repeat visitors,etc. (and possibly filter out potential bias that a sample of toolbar users could have).

They could also calculate expected bounce rates for sites in a niche (averages/means) and then give sites for which they do have that data (b/c of analytics and/or a big enough sample size of g toolbar visitors) a plus if its significantly above that expected value, etc..