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Insight Horizon Media

What does it mean if bounce rate is high?

Author

Christopher Anderson

Published Mar 08, 2026

What does it mean if bounce rate is high?

A high bounce rate on your site indicates your landing experience is not meeting your visitor’s expectations. Ideally, you want your site visitors to be captivated by your content the second they land on your site. A high bounce rate can mean a few things: Your visitors didn’t find what they were looking for.

What is a good bounce rate?

So, what is a good bounce rate? A bounce rate of 56% to 70% is on the high side, although there could be a good reason for this, and 41% to 55% would be considered an average bounce rate. An optimal bounce rate would be in the 26% to 40% range.

Is a 35% bounce rate good?

Anything over 85% is probably a “bad” bounce rate. Between 70-85% is in the red zone. Between 55-70% is average. Between 35-55% is good.

Does a high bounce rate hurt SEO?

Typically visits who bounce click the “back” button to go back to their previous search results or may close the browser window all together. If your bounce rate is high, this can effect SEO results as a high bounce rate is a sign of poor content to Google and other major search engines.

What is a good pages per session?

The unofficial industry standard is 2 pages per session. For most sites, the goal is keep users engaged, nurture their interest, and get them to take the next step. More pages per session often indicates that your users are highly engaged and willing to explore more of your site.

Why bounce rate is so low?

This is a metric used to gauge website performance and it is often seen in Google Analytics. Generally speaking, a low Bounce Rate means you are doing well and a high Bounce rate means there could be an issue with your website’s design, usability, SEO/content or functionality.

How do you interpret bounce rate?

A website’s bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of single-page sessions by the number of total sessions on the site. For example, if 100 users land on your website (total sessions) and 5 of them exit without triggering another request (single-page sessions), your website’s bounce rate is 5%.

Is 20% a good bounce rate?

As a broad rule of thumb, you’re aiming for a website bounce rate of under 40%. Between 40% and 55% is usually okay, while 55-65% shows significant room for improvement. If your bounce rate is above 90% or below 20%, that often indicates a tracking or code installation error.

Is a high bounce rate bad?

A higher bounce rate indicates fewer visitors are clicking on links to other pages on your site, whereas a lower bounce rate indicates more visitors are clicking to other pages.

Why bounce rate is not important?

Bounce Rate is not a valuable metric for gauging your website performance. As marketers, we want our data to tell us if things are good or bad. More revenue is good. Fewer registrations are bad.

What is a good bounce rate for SEO?

As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate in the range of 26 to 40 percent is excellent. 41 to 55 percent is roughly average. 56 to 70 percent is higher than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website. Anything over 70 percent is disappointing for everything outside of blogs, news, events, etc.

What is a good bounce rate 2021?

What is a good bounce rate? As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate in the range of 25 to 40 percent is excellent. However, 41 to 55 percent is fairly average. 56 to 70 percent is higher than average, but may not be cause for too much concern depending on the website.