Analytics bounce rate change
-
Hi mozzers,
I have a little riddle. A few weeks ago the bounce rate on one of our website dropped 90% - from 45 % average to 5 % average. We haven't changed much in the code of the site, layout or anything else. The traffic is pretty stable too.
Anyone can guess why? Or have experienced something similar?
-
Thank you Keri. Such a speedy response!
And NOW it makes sense. So happy to have that resolved.
-
Having it there twice can cause issues. I myself have an old post with this exact issue. What happens is that the tracking code fires twice.
My simplistic understanding, which may be good enough here:
Firing only once in a session: visitor didn't go to any other page, they're a bounce.
Firing more than once in a session: visitor did something else! they didn't bounce!
IIRC, my pageviews and pages per visit were also higher. Get the duplicate GA code off, and make an annotation in Google Analytics itself of what happened, so six months or two years down the road someone can look and understand why the metrics are wonky for that time span.
-
I know this is an old thread, but it might be exactly what I need.
A client site has seen a dramatic drop in bounce rates. They were making changes to the site layout around the time bounce rates suddenly dropped. I can see that they have Google Analytics installed twice on all pages. Could that be the problem?
If yes, why would having analytics installed twice cause the bounce rate to drop dramatically. Are the other site metrics reliable?
Any help would be much appreciated!
-
Yep, if you integrated any Facebook features around that time, there's a known FB bug that causes any visitor using Internet Explorer to re-load the page with "?fb_xd_fragment=" appended to the URL.
If you're being affected by this bug, you can look at behavior across browsers (FFX and Chrome are not affected by this bug), or you can search for URLs with that query string in them. The bug has been around for over a year, but FB has assigned it a P5, so not clear on when a definitive / easy fix is forthcoming.
-
Seems like a new post click overlay.
Thanks for the "next page" tip Greg!
-
Most likely something on your page is sending multiple calls/hits to Google. I've seen this happen with Facebook Connect. Look at the Navigation Summary report for pages that have this lower bounce rate to see if the "next page" is the same page (aka a self-referral). If so, that's your issue.
If you've started tracking Ajax interactions, that will also lower your bounce rate.
-
I've seen abnormally high bounce rates coming from a non 301 redirected domain before. Did you change the direction of any of your domains?
-
Ah! have you seen this?
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Analytics/thread?tid=57d6431b146c86a2&hl=en
-
No the data are site-wide, so the bounce rate has dropped on all pages. And the GA code is not installed twice. It's very strange.
-
Something accidental where you serve two pages? Or have your analytics twice on the page?
-
Hi Elias
Thanks for checking. I checked a bunch of other websites too, with no change.
And yes, the change is similar on all traffic sources.
-
Hi Thomas,
That's very odd! I've just checked some of our sites but none of them have seen anything like that.
As you haven't changed much in terms of layout then it would appear that there is a problem with your analytics tracking.
Is the change in bounce rate constant across all traffic searches i.e. search, direct etc?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Re-classifying a Traffic Source in Google Analytics
Hey All, I think it's inside of the Admin section of Google Analytics, right now I have a traffic source from the domain of indeed.ca that is being classified as Organic traffic when it should be classified as referring traffic, how can I tell Google Analytics that all traffic from this source should be classified as referral traffic and not organic traffic? Furthermore, after I make this change, will Google Analytics re-classify my past data so I can do a proper analysis? I can't remember how to do this and any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt1 -
Google Direct Traffic Reporting for Mobile on Analytics
We noticed a significant drop in our direct traffic in Google Analytics for mobile on July 30th but all our other traffic remains the same. What is the possible cause of this?
Reporting & Analytics | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Client has two default analytics accounts
A client has provided me with their analytics access but i notice that there are two default accounts on their account. They have two UA numbers. The first UA number is in their company name and the other UA number is in another company name with my clients website underneath. Their UA number in their company name is not showing any results however the other company UA number is showing results. Does anyone know why they will have two accounts and if this will cause a problem when trying to link their seo moz campaign to their analytics to track their keywords?
Reporting & Analytics | | Shelly760 -
Google Analytics: Multi channel funnel
Hi 🙂 I have a little problem. In Multi-channel Funnel Overview I see 50 conversions from Paid Search (screenshot 1). But when I click on Assisted Conversion and then choose Paid Search, I see 31 Assisted Conversions and 32 Last Interaction Conversion. (screenshot 2) So my question is - why the number of converstions in overview (50) is different than number in Assisted Conversions (assisted or last interaction conversion, or both together)? Probably, the answer is so simply, but I can found out it! 🙂 thanks a lot. X6UihL7.png lCNsw4T.png
Reporting & Analytics | | visibilitysk0 -
Need a tool for finding new links from analytics
I'd like to get a weekly report of all of the brand new referral links that have come in to my site over the last week. Is this something that can be done in google analytics? Is there a better tool for this out there? Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | seo-hunter0 -
X2 Google Analytics affect page rank ?
Hi there, If you had 2 Google Analytics Accounts one to the main site and another to the blog, could this affect the page position in Google? We've suddenly noticed a drop in our KWs and it was shortly after we added another Google Analytics Account. The blog has 68% Bounce rate and the main site has always been about 48%. Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | webdesigncwd0 -
What is other in analytics
Hello, I am in Google Analytics and I am looking at my visitors report which is segmented into new, returning, and other. How could someone possibly be other - they are either new or returning right? Please help!
Reporting & Analytics | | digitalops0 -
How do I best segment tablets on Google Analytics
I would like to find a way to best segment out my tablet traffic to measure performance; however I'm finding that there are road blocks. It doesn't seem that device operating systems or screen resolutions have clear cut differences in the tablet/mobile versions. Has anyone here found a good way to create a "tablet" segment in Google Analytics? Right now I'm having to lean on solely the ipad traffic to get indicators of tablet performance. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | lvstrickland0