What is Bounce Rate?
The percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave without any further interaction: no clicks, no scrolls past a threshold, no second page view. In Google Analytics 4, the inverse metric "engagement rate" is preferred: a session counts as engaged if it lasts over 10 seconds, triggers a conversion, or includes 2+ page views.
My perspective
In practice
A high bounce rate isn't always bad. A glossary page that answers a question in 5 seconds has done its job. Context matters. But for landing pages designed to convert, a high bounce rate signals a mismatch between what the visitor expected and what they found. Diagnosing it requires looking at traffic sources, page speed, and content relevance together.