Bounce Rate in Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics

Bounce Rate in GA4 is NOTHING like it is in UA.

See what you need to know about it, and how to pair it with other important metrics to make sense of it.

Bounce Rate in UA

In Universal Analytics, Bounce Rate meant that a visitor came to just one page on your site and then left.

And that’s a meaningless metric by itself.

It doesn’t tell you:

• How long the visitor stayed on the page
• Any actions they took while on the page

You need to also ask:

• Is this a repeat visitor who clicked a link from my newsletter?
• Is the information the visitor needed on that page, like my address/phone number?

Both of the above scenarios means that your site is doing its job.

You captured that visitor in some way that will lead to more visits/sales for you.

In other words, it’s okay that those folks only saw one page on your site and left.

But, too many site owners saw Bounce Rate in UA as a negative metric and something they needed to improve.

That’s because you had to pair it with time on site and other metrics to make any sense of it at all. And even then, it didn’t tell the whole story.

The best GA4 course for bloggers!

• Get it setup right
• Tour default reports
• Create 20+ custom reports
• Accurate metrics

Bounce Rate in GA4

Google didn’t even include Bounce Rate for nearly 2 years in GA4.

And once they did, it took on an entirely different meaning than UA.

In GA4, Bounce Rate is the opposite of Engagement Rate.

So, what does that mean?

Engagement Rate in GA4 means:

• A visitor stayed on the page for more than 10 seconds, or
• They activated more than 2 Events (beyond session_start and page_view), or
• Visited more than just that one page

So, Bounce Rate means that the visitor did not match any of the Engagement Rate criteria.

Making Sense of Bounce Rate

You can’t see Bounce Rate in any of the Standard Reports in GA4.

You need to make a custom Explore report.

And you need to combine that metric with:

• Engagement Rate
• Average engagement time per session
• Events per session
• Sessions

You may also want to combine it with Total Users in the report too.

Need Help?

I teach site owners how to build custom Explore reports and make sense of the data in the Ultimate Google Analytics 4 Course for Bloggers.