Adwords and Bounce Rate

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Grant29

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Jul 29, 2006
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I've read some blogs that seem in indicate that bounce rate and time on the site are going to start factoring in more on Adwords QS. I interpret bounce rate as a single page view (the person either goes on to the offer or hits the back button). If the person viewed another page on your site the bounce rate would go down.

Obviously if you are trying to get the person to click through to the offer you'd want a high bounce rate. I wouldn't be surprised if Google uses this data to determine that an affiliate site is just the middle man.

Maybe someone can help with these questions:

1. Can Google measure bounce rate if your not using Google Analytics?

2. If you try to achieve a high bounce rate as people click through to the offer will you eventually get google slapped in future updates?

3. What are ways to lower the bounce rate while still getting people to the offer?


I think the ideal solution would be a white label site where the person completes an offer on your site. That would increase time on site, lower the bounce rate and make your site look more legit. Unfortunately, most affiliate offers out there though are in the form of affiliate links so you are really trying to get people to leave your site through an affiliate link.

Any comments, ideas or theories on this topic?
 


We don't really have any concrete evidence that Google does this. Sure it's possible: just look at the time they clicked the search result and compare it to the time when they came back to the page (fire a pixel on the results page on reload).

But don't get confused here, you want your bounce rate to be LOW. You achieve lower bounce rates by laser targeting your keywords and presenting your landing page desirably.

Tob
 
According to Google: Google AdWords: Learning Center

[SIZE=-1]Bounce Rate : shows the percentage of time the visitor left without viewing any other pages.
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Click to expand...
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I see a bounce as hitting the back button OR clicking a link that leaves your site.

If all actions are happening on your site you want a low bounce rate. If you are trying to get the visitor to an offer via an affiliate link you want them to "bounce" to the offer.

Am I wrong here?
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We're talking Google Adwords here, they perceive bounce rate only between SERPS and landing page - thats it. So if searchers are continually going to your landing page and hitting back quickly, then lower your QS - hypothetically. They don't know what happens after the searcher lands on your page, only the time between when you left google and came back to google and if it's too quick/short then it will hurt your QS.

I personally don't think Google is doing this yet, it's too far fetched, but then again I have no concrete evidence and haven't done any research on my own.

Tob
 
If you are running analytics on your landing pages (which I wouldn't recommend) then Google could very well be integrating that bounce rate data from your page into the QS for your adwords ads. Are they actually doing it? Only Google knows, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they did. If they see you have an 80% bounce rate once users get to your page from adwords, they could easily use that to slap your ads down.
 
Thanks SonicReducer,

I think I'm going to remove my Google Analytics. I've got one site in particular using Google Analytics shows >95% bounce rate. I know they aren't all hitting the back button because I'm getting around 60% CTR to the offer and a decent amount of leads.

I really like the reporting and capabilities of Analytics, but am not sure I want them tied into all my business. When I created the analytics code I unchecked the "Track Adwords Conversions" since I'm not tracking conversions. I am using analytics for capturing the keywords, figuring out uniques, etc...

the webalizer on my server isn't so great, so can anyone recommend a good tracking package not tied to Google?
 
Grant29 said:
Thanks SonicReducer,

I think I'm going to remove my Google Analytics. I've got one site in particular using Google Analytics shows >95% bounce rate. I know they aren't all hitting the back button because I'm getting around 60% CTR to the offer and a decent amount of leads.
Click to expand...

A "bounce rate" that you see in Google Analytics is a different bounce rate - that means that the visitor left the site. So if the visitor clicks your affiliate link, they are leaving your site and Analytics sees it as a bounce.

As tob said, as far as Google Adwords is concerned they can only count a bounce if the visitor goes from your landing page back to SERPS. Unless they pull in Google Analytics data (which sounds shady but technically possible), then Adwords can't otherwise see what the visitor does after they get to your landing page.
 
hwy24 said:
A "bounce rate" that you see in Google Analytics is a different bounce rate - that means that the visitor left the site. So if the visitor clicks your affiliate link, they are leaving your site and Analytics sees it as a bounce.

As tob said, as far as Google Adwords is concerned they can only count a bounce if the visitor goes from your landing page back to SERPS. Unless they pull in Google Analytics data (which sounds shady but technically possible), then Adwords can't otherwise see what the visitor does after they get to your landing page.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
hwy24 said:
Unless they pull in Google Analytics data (which sounds shady but technically possible)
Click to expand...

That was exactly what I was talking about. The bounce rate from the GA data. I'm not saying they do that, but I have seen some results in testing that may suggest adwords and analytics may be having a little conversation...
 
Another free stats are Awstats from
AWStats - Free log file analyzer for advanced statistics (GNU GPL). (use Firefox to access the page)
and also Analog which is very detailed - shows you the complete link for each KW visitor clicked on when you have f.e. Yahoo SM tracking code enabled (so you don't need to add subID to know which SE the visitor came from) ...etc... => but that means it is Very heavy on space, so if you don't have enough hosting space you will be getting message that your account is running out of space.
 
at SMX in Seattle I got a chance to ask these exact questions of one of the senior Google Adwords Product Managers. He said they can tell, (independent of Google Analytics) how many users are hitting the back button, and how quickly, returning to the SERPs. It makes sense that they could measure this without Google analytics data.

They already factor the 'back button" rate into the lp QS he said. When asked if they do, or ever plan on, sharing Goog analytics data with the Adwords team, the answer was "no, not at the moment". So basically, they don't until they do. Kind of like when they let slip that they were going to share adwords conversion data with Adsense so they could kill MFAs.

I blogged the whole conversation he and I had here: (two parts) PPC Super Affiliate Blog » Q &A with Google Adwords Evangelist Frederick Vallaeys
 
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