[FAQ]

I’m looking at my website analytics and I remember “Bounce Rate” being a really important metric in the past. I’m a bit confused about whether it’s still a key thing to track in Google Analytics 4 in 2025.

Could someone give me a clear definition of what it means? And more importantly, is a high bounce rate always a bad sign for a page, or are there situations where it’s okay?

[Jeff Bullas]

Understanding “Bounce Rate” requires knowing that its definition and importance have changed with the shift from the old Universal Analytics (UA) to the current Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

First, let us look at the old definition of Bounce Rate from Universal Analytics, which is what most people are familiar with. In that system, a bounce was a session that triggered only a single request to the server. This meant a user landed on a page and then left without clicking on another page or interacting in any other way that sent information back to Analytics.

Under this old definition, a high bounce rate was not always a bad thing. For example, if a user found your blog post through a Google search, landed on the page, read the entire article to get the answer they needed, and then left completely satisfied, that was counted as a bounce. This was a successful visit, but it looked like a negative signal. Similarly, a user might land on your contact page, find your phone number, and leave to call you – another successful visit counted as a bounce. A high bounce rate was only truly a problem on pages where you expected further interaction, like a homepage or a product category page.

Second, because of this ambiguity, Google Analytics 4 has largely replaced Bounce Rate with a more useful, positive metric called “Engagement Rate.” An “engaged session” in GA4 is one that meets at least one of these criteria: it lasts longer than 10 seconds (this duration can be adjusted), it includes a conversion event, or it has at least two pageviews. Your Engagement Rate is the percentage of total sessions that were engaged. In GA4, a high Engagement Rate is always a good sign.

Third, while it was not there initially, Bounce Rate has been re-introduced as an optional metric in some GA4 reports, but it is now calculated differently and more logically. In GA4, the Bounce Rate is simply the inverse of the Engagement Rate. If your Engagement Rate is 75%, your Bounce Rate is 25%.

Therefore, to answer your question for 2025: a high Bounce Rate in GA4 is now a much clearer indicator of a problem than it used to be, as it directly reflects a low Engagement Rate.

In summary, you should now focus primarily on your Engagement Rate, where a higher number is better. If you do look at the Bounce Rate metric in GA4, remember that it is just the opposite of your Engagement Rate, so a high number is generally a bad sign that indicates users are not interacting with your page.

Cheers,

Jeff

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