• Ramblings About SEO, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 1:30 PM

Do you know your site's bounce rate? More importantly, do the search engine algorithms factor that bounce rate into account for rankings? Eric Enge asked Google's Matt Cutts about it, and his response alluded to the fact that the engines could likely detect a site's bounce rate -- but that there were also many contrasting factors and other "noise" that could skew any definitive results.

A site's bounce rate can be defined as either how long a user spends on a given site (with less than 15 seconds being a bounce) or how many different pages a user views before leaving a site. Determining whether a site's bounce rate is too high or just right depends on the nature of the site itself -- for example, whether it is research, e-commerce, or socially oriented.

Enge ads that while the engines may include a site's bounce rate in the myriad of ranking factors, it is not likely to carry an exorbitant amount of weight. But if your site does have a high bounce rate, it may be a sign of poor usability -- which is more of a deterrent than low SERP rankings could ever be.

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