Bounce Rate in Google Analytics 4: Reporting Guide

Wondering why you can’t find your bounce rate in Google Analytics 4? If you can’t track your bounce rate, how do you track user engagement on your pages in Google Analytics?

In GA4, bounce rate has been replaced by other engagement metrics. However, if you want to check your bounce rate, there is still a way to find it in Google Analytics.

In this article, we’ll talk about why bounce rate isn’t in Google Analytics’ main reports, how you can still access it, and other Google Analytics metrics you can use to gauge engagement that aren’t bounce rate.

Bounce Rate Tracking Video Walkthrough

Why Doesn’t Google Analytics 4 Show Bounce Rate?

Many users like to keep an eye on their bounce rate as an indicator of how engaging their page (or whole site) was to visitors who landed there. Bounce rate shows how many visitors left the site without clicking on any more pages or completing any conversions. Basically, it means they maybe read your page (or didn’t even do that), then left.

Bounce rate is calculated using the following formula:

Bounce rate of a page = Total number of single-page sessions / Total number of entrances on the page.

Although many website owners and marketers have historically used the bounce rate metric as a measure of success, it does come with some flaws. That’s why, instead of bounce rate, Google Analytics reports show engagement metrics, which give you a better idea of how your pages and content are really performing.

That said, although bounce rate isn’t a main metric in Google Analytics, you can still access it.

Bounce Rate vs. Engagement Metrics

Traditionally, a high bounce rate meant that too many people were landing on your page, then leaving without performing any events or visiting any other pages. For some websites and some content, it made sense to track bounce rate. For others, though, it wasn’t a great way to tell how well the page was actually doing.

For instance, let’s say you have a long, well-written piece of content that dives into a subject and answers questions. If a visitor landed on your page, spent 5 minutes reading through the whole thing, then left, that would be counted as a bounce.

Even though that visitor was super engaged by your content, you’d have no way of knowing that by looking at bounce rate.

To help clear that up, Google Analytics includes a new metric called Engaged sessions. Engaged sessions are sessions that include an event (like a click or form submission), more than one pageview, or last more than 10 seconds. That timing piece makes engagement more meaningful to track than bounce rate ever was.

Other engagement metrics you can use in Google Analytics include engagement rate, average engagement time, and engagement time per page. For more on engagement metrics, check out Top 5 User Engagement Metrics for Your Website Explained.

Where to Find Bounce Rate in Google Analytics 4

Although bounce rate isn’t a metric in any of the standard Google Analytics reports, you can find it in a couple of different ways.

Before we dive into our tutorial, though, note that bounce rate in Google Analytics now counts sessions lasting longer than 10 seconds as engaged. So, if you’re used to tracking your bounce rate in an older Google Analytics version, there will be sessions that are not counted as bounces, but they may have been previously.

In Google Analytics, the bounce rate is simply sessions that aren’t engaged. So, they’re sessions that didn’t last longer than 10 seconds, and the user didn’t click anything that fired an event, and they didn’t view any more pages.

Add Bounce Rate to Pages and Screens Report

Want to be able to see your bounce rate in your main pages report? You’re in luck – you can customize your core reports in GA4. Add metrics to the reports, or even remove ones you don’t use (like Revenue if your site isn’t eCommerce) to make the reports right for your site.

Step 1: To add bounce rate, navigate to Engagement » Pages and screens:

Step 2: Now click the pencil icon in the upper right of your screen:

Step 3: Next, a sidebar will open. Click on Metrics:

Step 4: In the sidebar options that appear, click on the bottom Add metric option, then start typing “bounce” to find and select Bounce rate. 

Step 5: Once it’s been selected, you’ll see Bounce rate added to the list of Metrics. Click Apply.

Step 6: Click the Save button. A dropdown will appear – choose Save changes to current report.

Step 7: A popup will appear asking if you’re sure you want to save your changes. Click Save.

That’s it! Exit the edit screen by clicking the Back arrow:

You can now scroll over in your Pages and screens table to view the bounce rate for each page.

And that’s it!

We hope you liked our article on how to track your site’s bounce rate in Google Analytics. We think you might also like to check out 9 Google Analytics SEO Hacks to Increase Search Traffic.

Or, to learn how to reduce your bounce rate, read How to Reduce Bounce Rate: 6 Simple, Proven Methods.

Not using MonsterInsights yet? What are you waiting for?

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for more helpful reviews, tutorials, and Google Analytics tips.