Bounce Rate (Absprungrate)

What is the Bounce Rate?

Many website operators panic when they see a bounce rate of 70 or 80 percent — but the number alone says little. Context is what matters: an FAQ page that immediately answers user questions will naturally have high rates. It becomes problematic only when transactional pages like product pages show high bounce rates — that signals a mismatch between the search query and the page content.

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website without visiting a second page or taking any action. In Google Analytics, a session is classified as a “bounce” when the user only views one page and leaves the website — regardless of whether that takes 5 seconds or 5 minutes. A high bounce rate (e.g., 80%) signals that the page offers little value to users, is poorly structured, or doesn’t match what the user expected from the SERP description. However, a high bounce rate is not always negative — a well-made FAQ page can have a high bounce rate and still be valuable.

Technically, the bounce rate is calculated as: (Single-page sessions / All sessions) × 100. A session where the user only views one page counts as a bounce — regardless of dwell time. The problem: Google Analytics doesn’t know whether a user read the page for 5 seconds or 5 minutes if they don’t trigger a second event. A page with high dwell time and high bounce rate is not necessarily bad — it may have been very informative. On the other hand, bounce rate is an indirect ranking factor via user signals: if many users bounce, it may signal to Google a lack of relevance.

In practice, evaluate the bounce rate in context. Analyze HOW users bounce: are they leaving immediately (technical issue? mismatch with SERP description?) or after longer dwell time (question answered and leaving)? The bounce rate for transactional keywords should be lower (user should click into the shop) than for purely informational keywords. To reduce high bounce rates: improve internal linking, clear calls to action, fast load times, and alignment with user expectations. But you don’t need to artificially lower bounce rate — focus on actual performance, not the metric.