Originally Posted by imported_silkroad (Post 1815140)

No. it is not. I have been over this with many sites.

Most sites that receive traffic mostly from search engine referrals (the long tail traffic) will see very high bounce rates.

This is because most users who search for content using a search engine will click on the site from, say Google, and then they will "go back" if they do not find what they need and select another site (from the search engine). This is the nature of "long tail" traffic.

Almost all sites with high volumes of traffic from search engines referrals have high bounce rates.

So, when you say (incorrectly) "all high bounce rates are bad" what you are saying is "all long-tail search engine referral traffic is bad" because you cannot high search engine traffic without having a high bounce rate.

This is a fact. I wish it was not a fact, but it is.

Forums with 95% of their traffic, which are millions of page views a month, will have high bounce rates. Sites with mostly direct traffic and referral traffic other that search engines, will have a lower bounce rate.

Folks who make blanket statements that "high bounce rate is bad" normally come from sites that have low page views and little traffic from search engine referrals. The proof is in the numbers of high volume sites with mega long-tail search referrals.

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It depends on the nature and volume of your traffic.

See my earlier posts.

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Then you, more than likely, have site with relatively low page views per month from direct or non-search engine referral traffic

Originally Posted by Justine (Post 1815161)

Originally Posted by UncoderMom (Post 1815298)

11.15% New Visits
20.56% Overall
9.83% Forum index
5.79% .com page
# Direct Traffic 11,616.00 (75.65%)
#
Search Engines 2,447.00 (15.94%)
#
Referring Sites 1,289.00 (8.39%)
#
Other 3 (0.02%)

13,025 pages were viewed a total of 115,712 times

Originally Posted by Spinball (Post 1816139)

Flawed poll. We have 60.5% bounce rate ;). We have massive penetration into Google and vBSEO installed. The trick is to keep people once they get here. No idea how to do that at the moment.

Originally Posted by Spinball (Post 1816225)

I have simplified our CMS (vBAdvanced) home page today. Will be interesting if that affects our bounce rate. I suspect it will make little difference.
I think if we need to reduce the bounce rate, we need something to entice them in on EVERY page. A welcome notice at the top for all new visitors which contains something to grab their attention.

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad (Post 1816191)

Sorry, but we don't need to grasp your message, because your message is incorrect.

If you have 5 million+ page views each month and most of your traffic is from search engine referrals, then please take a screen shot of the relevant data from Google analysts and post the images, showing your time period, page views, bounce rate and corresponding search engine referrals.

Sites with lots of direct traffic and referrals from other web pages get a much lower bounce rate than large sites with mega long-tail search engine referrals.

Frankly, Justine, I don't need a sidebar lecture on the topic (smile!), I want to see your facts :-) I do not think you have a site which gets massive search engine referrals and has a low bounce rate. All sites have the same issue. This is not theory, LOL, is this the nature of sites with massive search engine referrals.

Facts please!

PS: I have many sites with low bounce rates. They all have less traffic and a much lower percentage of search engine referrals. So, according to this poll, ROTFL, it is better to have a site with low traffic than a site with high traffic because the bounce rate is less? Not all sites are the same. You cannot make a blanket statement "low bounce is bad".... .that is why this poll is seriously flawed!

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Precisely my point, thank you!

This site (above) has a relatively low monthly page view where most traffic is direct traffic. Search engine referrals only account for 16% of the traffic. Naturally, this site will have a lower bounce rate that a site with much more traffic that comes mostly from long tail search engine referrals.

--------------- Added 24 May 2009 at 05:52 ---------------



Agreed !!

Folks who do not have massive long tail traffic do not understand this concept. If you try to lower the bounce rate, the effect is that you will lower the amount of long-tail search engine referrals.

It is very difficult to lower bounce rate on these sites. I once made a change that improved bounce rate about 8 percent, and I was happy. Folks who don't have a great deal of long tail search referrals and have mostly direct or site referrals do not grok this concept.

Originally Posted by lasto (Post 1816894)

Ive had a few cheques Bounce during this credit crunch does that count :)