Comments on: I love high bounce rates

By: Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:03:37 +0000

@Jason - I guess I have to be a little less subtle in my pseudo sarcasm. Of course I would rather have a site with no bounce rate. I also wrote this post about 14 days after starting this site and to be honest, I didn’t even really know what a bounce rate was.

By: jason

jason — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:25:43 +0000

hmmm…

If you had your choice, would you rather have a high bounce rate or a low bounce rate?

I have a Guitar Blog and my bounce rate is <2%. Even with a ton of entrecard traffic, I have been lucky to keep visitors on the site with high page views and low bounce rate.

Think about it… if you’re trying to monetize your site, it would make sense for a reader to hit as many articles as possible - after all, that’s just improving the odds they’ll click an add or an affiliate link.

Your point about people not reading anything but new entries seems odd. I mean, each entry you make is a potential money maker if you write good content. Otherwise, why not just delete all posts older than 1 month old .. if again, no one bothers reading them (which by the way, I did, which is why i’m posting on a 6 week old post).

Good luck in your 1 year goal, based on this post, I’ll be curious to see how far you get.

By: Mirjam

Mirjam — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:01:12 +0000

I posted on this same issue last week, coming to the same conclusions you have in your post here bounce rates are just another stat, understanding why it is high, and whether it influences whatever real result you want to get out of your blog, is what really matters;)

By: todd from talking dynamics

todd from talking dynamics — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:32:11 +0000

it’s partially a traffic thing - with entrecard on the site most people come for a quick drop then leave, and its not really 1 page and leave, its more 1 page for less than X amount of time, then leave, if users stay for like 30 seconds than it’s a legit visit, not counted as a bounce

By: Matt Ellsworth

Matt Ellsworth — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:15:32 +0000

We’ve seen high bounce rates on some sites. It all depends on where the traffic is coming from. If most of your stumble or entrecard traffic bounces - thats not a big deal. They might stick around one day (I did - thats how I got here…)

Also don’t forget that some block google analytics - so while it is good to measure 95% or so of your traffic there still is a portion it won’t catch.

By: Jillian

Jillian — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:42:23 +0000

You know, I agree with this entirely. I have enabled “post summary” on my blog, so for me if the bounce rate is high (which it is) it means, aside from my regular readers, people aren’t clicking the “read more”.

By: Bong (JB)

Bong (JB) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:49:11 +0000

Finally, somebody wrote it down. We have similar observations. Looking instead at the average time spent.

High bounce rates with blogs doesn’t bother us much.

Thanks.