Bounce Rate.

What is bounce rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of visits to a website that did not count as engaged. In GA4, a session is engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds (the default setting), includes a key event such as a form submission, or includes two or more page views. Bounce rate is simply the opposite of engagement rate.

In the older Universal Analytics, a bounce meant any single-page visit, which is why many businesses saw their figures change when they moved to GA4.

Why it matters

Bounce rate is a quick health check on whether the people arriving are the people you wanted, and whether the page gives them a reason to stay. A sudden rise on a landing page after a new campaign launches often points to loose targeting or a mismatch between the ad and the page. For a business paying per click, every visitor who leaves within seconds is money spent with nothing to show for it.

What moves it

• Traffic quality Visitors who clicked a vague ad or a broad social post leave faster than people who searched for exactly what you offer.
• Message match If the ad promised a fixed-price boiler service and the click lands on a generic home page, people go back and choose a competitor.
• Load speed A page still loading after a few seconds on a phone loses people before they have read a word.
• Page purpose A contact page where someone copies your number and rings you can look like a bounce, even though it did its job perfectly.

What to do about it

In GA4, bounce rate is often missing from the standard reports, so customise your Pages and screens report to show bounce rate and engagement rate side by side. Filter to your top landing pages and any pages that receive paid traffic. Look for pages where bounce rate sits clearly above your site's usual level, then check each one on a phone: speed, the first screen, and whether the headline matches the ad or search that brought people there. Fix the obvious mismatches first.