Does GA4 have Bounce Rate?

Yes, but it doesn’t mean the same thing as it did in Universal Analytics.

Let’s see how they’re different.

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Bounce in Universal Analytics

In Universal Analytics, if someone opened a page or post on your site and then left without clicking over to another page or post on your site, that was considered a Bounce.

It didn’t take into consideration how long they stayed on the page or if they even scrolled down to read more.

Events and Engagement in GA4

GA4 tracks Users, who are the visitors to your site, and the actions they take while there, which are Events.

Those Events are considered Engagement with your site.

Events are things like:

  • Session start, which is the opening of a page or post
  • Page View, which means the page finished loading so they could see it
  • Scroll
  • And Clicks

Bounce Rate in GA4

In GA4, if a visitor opens a page to start a Session, but has no other Event within 10 seconds, then that event is considered to have no Engagement. And it will be considered a Bounce.

So, in GA4, Bounce Rate means a Session was started but it was terminated with no other actions taken within 10 seconds.

Engagement vs Bounce Report

You can make a custom report to show Engagement Rate vs Bounce Rate.

They should equal 100% between the 2 of them. But that’s pretty meaningless.

Session and Engagement Report

A more meaningful custom report would be to show the number of Sessions started and then Engagement Rate and Bounce Rate. Or maybe just Engagement Rate, as the rest will be a Bounce anyway.

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