Where is the Bounce Rate in Google Analytics 4?

Posted by OptFirst Internet Marketing on October 21st, 2021

Let’s keep it simple: there is no Bounce Rate in GA4 – or Session Duration, either. What you’re looking for is Engagement Rate. And here’s how it works

Every time Google Analytics updates there’s always some kind of Earth-shaking shift.  In this case, it’s the recent disappearance of Bounce Rate – the internet traffic metric that tracked who visited only a single page on a site – in Google Analytics 4. But never fear, entrepreneur, Google’s here. The people who brought you Maps would never leave you stranded.

Enter Engagement Rate.

Why did Google get rid of Bounce Rate?

The first obvious question is where did Google Bounce Rate go? To put it bluntly, Google decided to retire the engagement metric because it just wasn’t quite accurate enough. 

For example, someone visits a site and interacts by reading an article or blog.  While they spent a significant amount of time on that page, Google used to count that as a bounce.  Another problem comes in the form of single-page apps and mobile. Users simply don’t always generate multiple page views during these sessions even though they’re obviously engaged, causing a discrepancy in the analytics versus reality. 

They tried to balance that out with Session Duration but – as many have noticed – that metric is gone, too.  Google UA’s Sessions also appears to have disappeared in the GA4 roll-out, however, it’s just been rolled into a digital measurement that performs far more accurately at tracking engagement across all platforms. 

That would be Engagement Rate.