[Sam]

What would be considered a high bounce rate for a website? I'm seeing a bounce rate of ~38% and am wondering if that could negatively impact rankings on Google (i.e. if people visit the site and then click the back button)?

[laksh]

What would be considered a high bounce rate for a website? I'm seeing a bounce rate of ~38% and am wondering if that could negatively impact rankings on Google (i.e. if people visit the site and then click the back button)?

Well, people say it does affect the site's ranking.. but sometimes I feel it's unfair.. because a lot of times, we get out of a website after it has served our purpose, like if we go to an article, and if it answers our question, then we just close the tab or hit the back button.. Well, Google is the boss, so can't do much about it.. But I don't think 38% is too high for you to worry.. if it crosses 50%, something needs to be done.

[IcyFirefly]

The bounce rate of the website does have an effect with the page rank and also the earnings from Adsense on the blog if you use Adsense, because people don't hang around too long on your blog to register a view or have time to explore the ads you have on your blog. At least, that was my experience with my blogs.

I think it is unfair too because other things could also be happened such as sudden electrical outrage, or the internet got cut off.

[RapidBlue]

Bounce rate is higher for a 1topic-1post blogs/forums/webpages or a photography blogs/webpages.
If your visitors come to see one thing in one post and you don't offer much of anything related you will have a very high bounce rate.
That rate doesn't say much, it can't define the quality of your content, rank in Google or anything.
38% is fine , 88% would be significant as it would mean that people are just leaving as soon they get there, so with this you are quite okay.

[thisnthat]

So, does that mean if they hit the back button at all or if they just hit it quickly? The former would seem extremely unfair, while the latter makes a bit more sense. I'm trying to think now how often I hit the back button after checking out the content I've come to see... I'll have to pay attention to that. If it's a site I like, I'll have to be careful about how I navigate so I don't mess them up.

Every time I learn more about this stuff, I find that I have even more to learn.

[RapidBlue]

So, does that mean if they hit the back button at all or if they just hit it quickly? The former would seem extremely unfair, while the latter makes a bit more sense. I'm trying to think now how often I hit the back button after checking out the content I've come to see... I'll have to pay attention to that. If it's a site I like, I'll have to be careful about how I navigate so I don't mess them up.

Every time I learn more about this stuff, I find that I have even more to learn.

Both is the same, it doesn't really matter because there is no way that you can mimic a bot and they are the ones that bounce back really fast. You can not mess anything up if a page is built towards higher page views or per-page info, it's just a part of the statistic.

[Fergal]

Bounce rate is not something that should be looked at in isolation. Whether or not a high bounce rate is good or bad, depends very much on the nature and type of the website.

For example, I read before that Wikipedia has a very high bounce rate. Many people search for something on Google, an article on Wikipedia comes up as the top result, the person visits the article finds what they need and then navigate to a different site. This gives Wikipedia its high bounce rate, yet the site ranks extremely well in the search engine results and it is obviously very successful.

[tpicks]

A 38% bounce rate looks like a high one. What Google may think is that people don't stay on that site long enough to interact with the ads. But there are people who just go to a site to get a specific info and the moment they get that they are off no time to play around the site. Cases like this may constitute a high bounce rate to Google.