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Does Bounce Rate Influence Ranking in Google for SEO?
Does Internal Visit Bounce Rate Influence Ranking for SEO?
The bounce rate of page is an internal factor that should not be tracked by Google. And also should not be a SERP ranking factor, even if Google can track page bounce rate with Google Analytics, Free Google Wifi, and Google Toolbar. Doing so would also be an unethical business practice.
Moreover, a year back in a video, Matt Cutts confirmed that they are and will not use the user data in Google Analytics in their ranking signals. So, we can rule out that Page Visit Bounce Rate is and will be a ranking factor for Google.
Does Google SERP Bounce Count in SEO?
People are also talking about the Bounce that happens by landing on the page and then returning back to the search result page (SERP) by hitting the “Back” button in the browser. Let’s call it SERP Bounce. This SERP Bounce can be granted as quality factor, since it can give you some extent of quality perspective of the site.
Recently, Google introduced “Block all site results” feature. You can see an extra link below a site saying “Block all www.badsite.com results”, when you have visited the page and immediately bounced back to the the Search Engine Result Page or SERP. You can make use of this feature only if your are signed in. Moreover, this is one of the proofs that Google is tracking the SERP Bounce back, when you visit a low quality site.
What Happens When You Block the Results of a Site from SERP
Here is what Google has to say:
Once you’ve blocked a domain, you won’t see it in your future search results… On the settings page you can find details about the sites you’ve blocked, block new sites, or unblock sites if you’ve changed your mind.
So, according to Google SERP Bounce, Google automatically puts result block link below the site title to flag the site as irrelevant when you do a SERP Bounce.
Does Google SERP Bounce Influence Rankings and SEO?
SERP Bounce is not a universal behavior. e.g. I like to use Ctrl+Click and open all good results I find in separate window or tab. In this situation there is no “Back” option in the browser. Moreover, if I search again, after visiting a page, it will not be considered a bounce. So, I don’t think Google will be using it as universal signal like other factors in the Google Search Algorithm.This is mostly be a spam identification or quality factor, rather than a ranking factor. Google did the same previously with the SearchWiki feature, which was rumored to be a great ranking factor :-), Google clearly mentioned that:
We’re adding this feature because we believe giving you control over the results you find will provide an even more personalized and enjoyable experience on Google. In addition, while we’re not currently using the domains people block as a signal in ranking, we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future.
