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Bounce rate 0:48
A 48-second explainer of Bounce rate, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
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What this video covers
Traditionally (Universal Analytics), bounce rate is the share of visits where someone lands on a page and leaves without any further interaction - one page, no second click. Modern tools have redefined it: GA4 leads with engagement rate instead and treats bounce rate as simply its inverse - the percentage of sessions that were not "engaged", where an engaged session lasts longer than ten seconds, triggers a key event, or has two or more views. Either way it's easy to misread - a high bounce can mean people couldn't find what they wanted, or found it instantly and left satisfied - and it means nothing until you know what the page was for and which definition your analytics platform is using.
The same 80% bounce rate flips from disaster to triumph the moment you change what the page is for. On a product funnel it means people are leaving before buying; on a quick-answer article it means they got what they came for in one glance. Bounce rate without context isn't a metric, it's a Rorschach test.