Was reading an interesting post by Seth Godin this morning about bounce rate called Silly Traffic. Google Analytics defines "bounce rate" as "the percentage of single-page visits". Which got me thinking -- what's our bounce rate?

The last time I calculated our bounce rate (before we installed GA), it was pretty good: about 50% of new traffic signed up for Weebly.

Traffic to Weebly.com is made up of about 40% new, 60% returning. Of the new traffic, a significant portion -- a little below 40% -- arrives from search engines.

I was quite surprised to log-in this morning and find out that our bounce rate is 33% for new visitors, and 20% for returning visitors.

On the face of it, this seems to contradict the beginning of Seth's article, that all sites see at least a 75% bounce rate from unfocused traffic, but I haven't had much time to think about why that might be.

What's your bounce rate?

 


Comments

Tom link
04/24/2008 09:11

Our bounce rate to http://www.ok-cool.com/ is currently about 80% for our blog. I attribute this to the fact that our blog is, well, a bit random sometimes with regards to content. Also, we get a lot of traffic from SumbleUpon which potentially lends itself to delivering high bounce rates (because I'm likely just to click Stumble again).

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Steve
04/24/2008 09:38

I run a site with about 8M pageviews/mo. My bounce rate is 66% this past 20 days.

I'm working on redesiging now to counter ad-rage & actual navigation.

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Scott Whigham link
04/24/2008 09:46

We had a bounce rate of around 50% for http://www.learnsqlserver.com/ a while. I then refocused a few landing pages and bounce rate went to 43%.

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Stephan Schmidt link
04/24/2008 11:25

My blog bounce rate (Google Analytics) is around 85%. Lots of traffic is from DZone.

Peace
-stephan

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herval link
04/25/2008 18:19

two sites I can account for:

MyGuestmap (mapservices.org/myguestmap) - 69% bounce rate
investidorvirtual.com - 17,55% (don't ask me how!)

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kata link
04/28/2008 21:50

72.42% bounce rate

6.33% Direct Traffic
90.05% Referring Sites
3.62% Search Engines
79.33% New Visits

most people come from mp3 blog-crawl sites like hype machine and elbows. I just signed up for xchannel and i've been getting a butt-load from them.

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alastair Humphreys link
07/02/2008 13:54

I was pleased to see that www.alastairhumphreys.com had a bounce rate of 80%. I was pleased that I had such a high number until I went away and learnt that actually a LOW number is what I want! Hey ho...
Al

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Katy link
07/16/2008 08:00

The bounce rate for my eco yoga mat e-commerce site is consistently around 35%. That number skyrocketed to 90% in one day of experimenting with one "questionable" AdWords buy. ;)

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Sean Goss link
07/18/2008 04:25

My bounce rate came down from 85% to 55%. What is a fair bounce rate, since I underatnd that anything above 30%, is still too high?

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jason day link
09/19/2008 13:05

At <a href="http://www.cbmaine.com">CBMaine.com</a> our bounce rate is 18.59%. But our site's traffic is focused due to it being a real estate business. I would actually like to add more content to draw more visitors (which would likely increase my bounce rate)

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cannabis test link
09/24/2008 12:47

Hi, my rate 90% from google

Regards, DSasser

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Scott Romano link
09/30/2008 06:56

Our bounce rate is about 60% but I attribute that to posting on website design sites and places like here where people click to go see the site but are not potential purchasers. If you have a high bounce rate, look for some things that may be causing it. (Like where you post your links).

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drug test link
10/29/2008 02:04

My bounce rate is 55% this past 15 days
Regards, Susan
<a href="http://elmirastore.com">how to pass a drug test</a>
<a href="http://howlongdoescocainestayinyoursystem.com/">how long does cocaine stay in your system</a>

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how long does cocaine stay in your system link
10/30/2008 05:32

Hi,
I attribute that to posting on website design sites and places like here
Regards, Richardson

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Al link
12/23/2008 10:31

After reading the other bounce rates, I don't fee so bad or sad. My site HortClassifieds.com has only been live 4-5 days and my bounce rate is getting lower every day. I'm around 70%. Average page view per visit is almost three and I really don't have anything for people to look at yet. I'm waiting for dealers to signup and post some ads and I know it will take time, but like another mentioned, I cahnged some of my landing pages and it has helped.

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Al link
12/23/2008 10:37

After reading the above I'm not so sad, and if this post twice I'm sorry. My site www.hortclassifieds.com has only been live 3-5 days and my page views per visit are almost three. My bounce rate goes down more everday and I dont really have any content yet, as i wait for dalers to signup. I know it will take time, but I feel better after reading this article. Thanks A

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Google Secret Loophole link
05/25/2009 09:50

Some of your bounce rates from the people in the comments area is unbelivable. I get around 7% which I thought everybody got.

I would love to say it's because I am doing this new fangled thing but I am not. Total Shocked

Jay

http://googlesecretloopholeprofits.com

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Statsjunky Review link
06/20/2009 14:47

Hi.

We also see a very high bounce rate on our pages. I don't know why that's the case. But to be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time to investigate further.
For me it's more important, that my site is profitable. And that my advertising money is spent on the right stuff.

But maybe I have to take a closer look..

Dan

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Berlin Property link
10/06/2009 04:47

We have just started our online business selling Berlin Property, and I have been learning how to crack the google, and am intriged by "bounce rate" new to old visitors etc. I presume the higher quality your site is, the higher the return visitor rate will be, and whether viewer grant it enough power to deserve a second visit. Ps. I like you theme picture by the way - cool :-) Where is it?

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