I was poring over my Google Analytics data this evening wondering why on earth the bounce rate on my running log site was so high when a thought hit me: What if it was because people are actually making it their homepage? I had noticed in my user traffic logs a few weeks ago that a couple users were showing up at the main page several times a day, but only adding new runs or looking at their data once a day. Originally, I thought it was bot traffic (I tend to keep an eye out for those so that I can mark the IPs and remove them from my visit logs), but then how were they signed in with the cookies? And why were the times so random? Then, it hit me that they had saved my site as their homepage and it was popping up whenever they turned on their computer. How cool is that! But, it wasn’t until today that I realized that this was part of the reason my bounce rate was climbing. Sure enough, when I broke it out, the New Visitor bounce rate was 16% lower than the Returning Visitor bounce rate. So, moral of the story is, bounce rate isn’t always everything. In this case, the fact that my bounce rate was rising (because people were setting the site as their home page) was actually a good thing.

On a related note, I discovered that 39% of my organic search traffic was coming in using the keywords “east coast runners” (the name of my site). Interesting… So, my search numbers were actually 61% lower than what the reports showed because anyone coming in off that term obviously already knew the site and was just typing it in through Google rather than their address bar. (Personally, I do this all the time — It saves you from seeing spammy sites if you accidentally misspell the domain.) So, that wasn’t really that big of a surprise, but this was: People coming in off that search term had a 69% bounce rate! Why would that number be so high? I’ve been pondering this for a while but can’t come up with an answer. Why would you search for a site by name, go there, and then immediately leave? Making this even more interesting is the fact that (as you would imagine) 85% of people coming in off the term are returning visitors. So, they know what to expect from the site, they search for it anyway, and then they bounce? WTF?