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I have been working with a website that has had a consistent bounce rate around 50-60%. A couple weeks ago, the bounce rate dropped significantly to 2-6% for about a two week span. Recently, it has shot back up to around 50%.

I have not made any big changes to the website, I checked for duplicate ga.js loading, etc. But I can't figure out how this could have happened.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I may be able to track this down?

Thank you.

Ryan
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1 Answers1

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First check if there was any corresponding fluctuation in other stats like pageviews or visits. It may not be an anomaly. Your bounce rate may have come down.

Next, determine if any events were added during that time to non-interactive events. See Event tracking implementation considerations.

Finally, if it was event tracking that did it, you can eliminate event tracking from affecting bounce rate by adding the non-interactive parameter.

jk.
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  • Thank you, I am looking into this now. It seems like our pageviews were somewhat higher than normal, but enough to warrant a drop from 50% to under 1% in bounce rate. Thanks for the info, I will report back with my findings. – Ryan Mar 23 '12 at 17:06
  • @Ryan Also, check into any additional js that may have been added to the pages that could possibly fire another pageview. Would love to hear what the culprit is. Do you have a test page to look at that is SFW? – jk. Mar 23 '12 at 17:12
  • Good call on the additional js. I would send you a link, but this project is under an NDA. Thank you for your help, and I'll be sure to let you know what the culprit was. – Ryan Mar 23 '12 at 17:42
  • It looks like the culprit was a WordPress plugin. I'm still trying to find out 100% how it was happening, but it looks like it was somehow recording outbound clicks in the analytics. – Ryan Mar 26 '12 at 20:29