Bounce vs Pogostick – the Differences and How Google Evaluates
Welcome to the first Vlog of Conversions. Like everyone else, the first time is always making us nervous and a little awkward but very excited. After filming, I did notice that there were still some not good enough things, next time I will notice to adjust.
The main content of this vlog:
– What is the bounce rate?
– What is counted as bounce and not bounce?
– What is Pogostick?
– What information do they give us about the user experience?
– What effect do they have on Google’s evaluation on our website and its content?
Let’s watch this Vlog for the answers.
Below is the text version of the content in the video:
Welcome to the first vlog of conversion.vn. In this Vlog I will discuss the topic Bounce and Pogostick. These are two concepts that many people are very confused with.
Actually Bounce and Bounce Rate are known by many people, but Pogostick may not be that popular. The similarity of these two concepts is that they all talk about the user exiting the website; but their difference is how people exit the site. And this difference has a huge impact on the google rating of your website and it directly affects some things like ranking your website on search results for example.
To understand more about this issue let’s together find out.
As seen on this board, I have drawn some illustrations for some of the things I’m going to talk about:
For example, a customer search for keywords related to your product, and your website is on the top of the search results and they click on it to get to the website. At this time on the website will have three possible situations:
The first case: if they go to the website and take an action, which may include clicking the link on the menu, the link on the page to get through to another page on your website. That is called an interaction. Or they can take an action like clicking on the purchasing button, clicking on the button to leave their information or staying on the website for a longer time than the standard one you have set up. For example, if you set up on Google Analytics, staying on your website for more than 3 minutes is considered “completing a Goal.” Even if they do not click, they do not interact anything but they “complete your goal” will still not count as a Bounce.
This is the first case, which means that there is no Bounce at all – which somewhat means that the user is satisfied with the content they find, and maybe other content on the site is appropriate as well which drive them to read more.
The second possible case is that the customer has accessed the website but they do not interact or do anything and they shut down or exit the website. Their exit may include the following: turning off the tab on their browser, closing their browser, or going through another website. That means on your site there is a link and that link leads to another website and they click on it to go through the other website. This will be counted as a Bounce.
It is commonly understood by many people that: a high bounce rate is a bad sign and the bounce rate should be as low as possible. I think bounce is not really not good. Actually it is a vague factor. For example, if the users access the website and find the content they need which they find necessary enough, they read the content and they exit the site. The problem here is that users who do not interact on the site do not mean they do not like the content they see. And in some cases, we see forums, Q & A pages that have very high Bounce Rate rates. Because, as I said, users go to see what they need and then exit, not interact anymore but they find what they need.
Cases when Bounce is not good are when people visit the website, which they find the contents inaccurate, not interesting and they exit. Of course, at this case, in addition to the Bounce Rate, it also relies on a number of other factors and indicators to evaluate whether customers really find what they need. What are the other indicators? These may include Time On Site. For example, if your site has a low Time On Site and a high Bounce Rate, then the site may not be very good. This assumption can be based on the fact that people did not stay long and escape quickly, which implies that the site is pretty bad. But if the person stays on the website for over 1 minute to 2 or 3 minutes, even though the Bounce Rate is high, it shows that the page offers useful contents so people stay and read then exit, which means the site is not so bad.
The third case, as what I like to call, is Pogostick.
What is the Pogostick? It the same situation when users access your site from the search results, then they do not interact at all and they leave the site. But how they leave the website is what really matters. As mentioned above, in the bounce case, user exits the website by turning off Tab, turning off Browser or going through another site.
But in this circumstance, they exit the site not using the way above but by pressing the Back button. They go to your website, they see something very fast and they click the Back button in the browser and they return to the search result page that they have been to. For Google, this is a signal, a very clear indication that the content on this website is not what the user is looking for, and they return to the search result page to visit another result site and open another content that is more suitable for them.
If the Pogostick index occurs often then it will show Google that: users coming to your website through search results are usually not so happy with it. And in long-term google evaluates that your website is not suitable for the keywords they search for this; which lead Google to eventually lowering your website rank for that keyword. We can see that this is a powerful impact, and of course it not only affects the factors such as rankings of search results but also even the impact of google on the advertising results. . This is one of the factors that I think Google use to evaluate a website.
At this point, you understand the difference between Bounce and Pogostick. If you have any questions or need clarifications on these two indicators, please ask under the comment section below of this video. Thank you for watching the show
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