Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions in which a user visits only a single page on a website and leaves without triggering any additional pageviews or interactions. In Google Analytics 4, the equivalent concept is expressed as the "engagement rate," with a bounce being any session that lasts under 10 seconds and involves no meaningful interactions.
A high bounce rate is not inherently negative — it depends entirely on the page type and query intent. A user who finds the exact answer they needed on a single page and leaves satisfied is still a successful session from a user-experience perspective. Context matters: landing pages, blog posts, and contact pages naturally have higher bounce rates than e-commerce category pages or tool pages.
Why it matters for SEO
While Google has stated that raw bounce rate is not a direct ranking signal, extreme bounce rates can indicate a mismatch between the page content and the user's intent, which indirectly affects rankings over time. Monitoring bounce rate by landing page and traffic source helps identify pages where content fails to meet user expectations after the click.
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