Misunderstanding Your Bounce Rate Google Analytics

Today I spoke to a client who was convinced her bounce rate was 75% in Google analytics.

What she working off was the Audience overview in Analytics

So she was thinking her website was failing her badly. Perhaps at first glance you can understand it, as she was comparing it to the month before.

But during the month she had opened a Twitter and Facebook account. so I showed her why her bounce rate had gone up.

If you click on Acquisition / Overview

This view shows the breakdown of her referrers, Twitter and Facebook.

Her Twitter visitors were bouncing at 67%

and her referrers were bouncing at 88%

While in fact her organic search was bouncing at 45%

Clicking on the social link showed that her twitter traffic was in fact bouncing at 87% and it was this figure combined with her referrers that was pushing the overall bounce rate up.

So much for social media. Facebook was at 67%.

Her actual Google organic traffic was bouncing at 44%

I hope that helps some of you understand why % figures can be so difficult to understand and also mislead you into making bad decisions.

Thanks.