Does the bounce rate of your website affect Google rankings?

In today’s blog, we’ll explore if bounce rate is used for search rankings, and if there is a relationship between rankings and bounce rate.

Even though in the past Google has said it doesn’t use any data from Google Analytics as part of rankings, some SEOs disagree and say that there are discrepancies between Google’s claims

Many experts from Google have explicitly said that rankings are not affected by bounce rate, including John Mueller earlier this year. The same claims have previously been made by Gary Illyes (2015) and Matt Cutts (2010).

However, back in June 2020, Backlinko, a well-known SEO blog, published an article saying that

“Bounce rate may be used as a Google Ranking factor.”

This cited an industry study that found that there was a correlation between ranking on the first page of Google and bounce rate.

In Google’s How Search Works documentation, the company confirmed it uses aggregated and anonymised interaction data to work out if a piece of content is relevant to the search query. Even though this doesn’t give much information, some marketers have inferred that “interaction data” does include bounce rate statistics.

However, it’s worth remembering that some websites don’t have Google Analytics installed, which is the only place Google could get this data. Furthermore, bounce rate can easily be manipulated, so wouldn’t be an effective statistic to use for rankings.

To conclude, it looks like what Google has said is correct, and bounce rate isn’t used as a ranking factor for Google. Therefore, the best thing to look at is creating valuable content to be added to your website, instead of worrying about how many people are visiting and leaving your site.

If you are looking to increase traffic to your website to increase your business’s sales and leads, have a chat with our friendly team at Engage Web to discuss how we can help your business by using effective digital marketing.

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Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

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