What is considered a "good" bounce rate?

[Gerry]

Okay, every one eventually "leaves" a site.

I have a few sites with a bounce rate of about 50% - 60%.

BUT, one of those sites has avg 00:02:14 avg time on site with a 51.04% bounce rate and another has 00:01:36 avg time on site with a 65.99% bounce rate and another with 00:01:30 avg time on site with 63.16% bounce rate.

Needless to say, an ideal bounce rate is zero but rich content that keeps a viewer on site is a big factor, imo, that sometimes negates any other stat.

 

[stock_post]

Where do I find info about bounce rate?
-- I heard that but never bothered to look.

 

[nicedomains]

Google analytics will provide this info

---------- Post added at 05:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:50 PM ----------

My avg minisites bounce rates are worse at around 70-80% ... Something I need to work on. Certainly adding more relevant pages and content within your site should help. Also, something I will try out is enhancing the visibility of hyperlinks that link to other pages within my sites.

For the inevitable question to come:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

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

 

[nicedomains]

I'm no expert doc, but I would guess a good bounce rate is 50% or lower.

 

[Gerry]

I'm no expert doc, but I would guess a good bounce rate is 50% or lower.

Well, there just seems to be so many factors involved.

If I have a bounce rate of 75% but people are spending 2 - 3 minutes on the site, I think that is pretty good.

I'd like to see some with a lower rate, but if people are spending time on the site and clicking ads then I call that a success.

Like I said, everyone has to leave a site at some point in time.

I also look at other analytics such as % new visitors and % returning visitors.

Too many factors, not enough time to study all in depth.

I guess the measure of success is the $$$.

 

[domainbizness]

A good bounce rate is 30-40%. The lower the number, the more time they have spent on your website or blog. My blog is at 33% and my customer average on my blog is 14 minutes.
Sign up for Google analytics, look up your bounce rate, which is directly related to the amount of time your visitors are viewing your site. Any more questions feel free to ask..

 

[Bill F.]

I had a bounce rate of 81% on a highly ranked site, and it was bugging me because I had good content.

But then I realized I was providing a full answer to the searcher's question on the first page, and they had no reason to click elsewhere. Thus, as I understand it, even though someone may hang around your site for a while - if they don't click to go to another page, but instead just close the window or click back to Google - that counts as a bounce.

So I changed the landing page from a static page (I am using Wordpress) to a random blog post, forcing them to click to go to the page with all the answers.

My bounce rate immediately dropped to 65%-70%.

So, if you are giving away too much on the first page, think about breaking it up and forcing your user to click to get more.

The change, by the way, had no effect on adsense clicks and little effect on average time spent on site.

 

[wael]

50% is not bad at all. One person here said 30%, and that is extraordinarily good. My guess would be that 60% is closer to the average.

---------- Post added at 06:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:12 PM ----------

By the way, if you're using Adsense effectively then your bounce rate will go up, as people are clicking out of your site.

 

[BFitz]

My bounce rate on sites with relevant, specific and relatively brief (400 words) content and photos is 30%-ish. My bounce rate on no-photo landing pages and content that is less specific and long-winded is over 60%. Same keywords which are geo-restaurants. I am now over-hauling all sites to match the 30% ones.

 

[tetrapak]

Overall 50-60% bounce rate is good, but for your main keyword you should aim for 20-30%.

 

[fab]

I have a 61% bounce rate on one of my sites, and can say I am very displeased. I am striving for low 30's.

 

[tetrapak]

60% is normal, especially if we are talking about an established site that has returning visitors. If they see there is no new content, they bounce away, hence raising the bounce rate. I can tell you exact examples by the frequency of updates:

One update per month: 69.49%
Weekly updates: 54.16%
Daily updates: 43.35%

These are three different sites, so of course you have to take into account the differences, but for example the weekly and daily updated sites are within the same niche, have similar layout and design, so the indicated numbers are quite close to reality how the number of updates determine the bounce rate on established sites.