Bounce rate

Three definitions in common use

Universal Analytics counted a bounce as a session with a single interaction, usually one pageview. GA4 turned it around: its bounce rate is the share of sessions that weren't engaged, and a session counts as engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event or views two or more pages. A reader who spends three minutes on one post is a bounce in Universal Analytics and an engaged session in GA4.

Vireo counts visitors per day rather than sessions, so its bounce rate is a third definition again. Knowing which one a number uses matters more than the number itself.

How Vireo counts a bounce

Vireo's bounce rate is the share of a day's visitors who viewed exactly one page. A visitor is counted the way the Visitors card counts them, once a day, so someone who reads one page on Monday and one on Tuesday is a bounce on both days.

Over a longer range, each day's visitors and bounces are added up before the share is worked out. It's stored as two daily counts, visitors and visitors who viewed a second page, with nothing kept about a single visitor.

Reading it

A high bounce rate isn't bad on its own. A recipe, a support answer or a news story often does its job in one page. It matters on pages meant to lead somewhere, such as a pricing page or the first step of a signup.

Read it next to time on page. A high bounce rate with a long time on page usually means people found what they came for. A high bounce rate with a few seconds means they didn't.

Pitfalls

Bounce counting started with Vireo 0.13.0, from the day after the update on existing sites, because visitors who arrived earlier on the update day were already counted without it. Imported days have no bounce rate.

Because a day is the unit, a reader who opens one page in the morning and another in the evening isn't a bounce, even though a session-based tool would count two one-page sessions.