Hide Drop Offs/Bounce Rate

[TravG]

Since we are in the affiliate business the goal is to have a visitor leave our site and go to a casino - that is a good thing! But because of that our bounce rate is going to be rather high, especially if your website is good.

I would think the better your website the higher your bounce rate is going to be and the less interaction you are going to have with the visitor. I would think if we are doing it right, the visitor lands on our site and leaves immediately to go to the casino or probably only has 1 or 2 interactions where they go the casino page and leave the site to visit the casino.

Of course your website could just be junk and the visitor is leaving because your site is not good, but I think also if your site is in fact good, that could increase your bounce rate.

Since bounce rate is a bad thing (in general), is there a way to hide or mask the drop off when a visitor leaves your site to go to a casino. If I could look to see whether the visitor is in fact leaving my site to go to a casino (which is good) verses a visitor just leaving the site I could see what pages are actually doing a good job referring players to a casino and which are having visitors leave. A high bounce rate on a page is not necessarily a bad thing - right? If the visitor is leaving to go to a casino its good.

Anyone know a way to track the difference between the two? Of all the drop offs or "bounces", how many are leaving through an affiliate link? Is there a way to track that by page?

Thanks!

[PROFRBcom]

In many of the affiliate back-ends that I work with there is a "hits log" or something of that equivalent that tells what web page many of the people who clicked our affiliate links came from.

[baldidiot]

You using analytics? If so you just need to use event tracking on the affiliate links - that way anyone who clicks an aff link isn't seen as a bounce, but a user who has only seen one page but completed an event. I've used it in the past, but don't do it so much recently.

With it you set multiple parameters for category, event (so 'click') and label so you can actually see exactly where the user clicked. Combine it with a database driven system and you can very efficiently get a ton of data about your traffic (I mainly use it with PPC these days for this reason).

Anyway, all you need to do is just stick the following code in your links:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Event', 'Label']);"

eg:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'reviewpage', 'click', 'somecasino']);"

More details here: https://developers.google.com/analyt...ntTrackerGuide

[TravG]

Yes I am using Analytics. This looks like exactly what I was looking for - Thanks

You using analytics? If so you just need to use event tracking on the affiliate links - that way anyone who clicks an aff link isn't seen as a bounce, but a user who has only seen one page but completed an event. I've used it in the past, but don't do it so much recently.

With it you set multiple parameters for category, event (so 'click') and label so you can actually see exactly where the user clicked. Combine it with a database driven system and you can very efficiently get a ton of data about your traffic (I mainly use it with PPC these days for this reason).

Anyway, all you need to do is just stick the following code in your links:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Event', 'Label']);"

eg:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'reviewpage', 'click', 'somecasino']);"

More details here: https://developers.google.com/analyt...ntTrackerGuide

[edgarf76]

You using analytics? If so you just need to use event tracking on the affiliate links - that way anyone who clicks an aff link isn't seen as a bounce, but a user who has only seen one page but completed an event. I've used it in the past, but don't do it so much recently.

With it you set multiple parameters for category, event (so 'click') and label so you can actually see exactly where the user clicked. Combine it with a database driven system and you can very efficiently get a ton of data about your traffic (I mainly use it with PPC these days for this reason).

Anyway, all you need to do is just stick the following code in your links:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Event', 'Label']);"

eg:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'reviewpage', 'click', 'somecasino']);"

More details here: https://developers.google.com/analyt...ntTrackerGuide

Can this work for banners to make a custom sign up page and a regular lander pop up?

[wettFORM.AT]

this is a good point. I am also not sure how important the bounce rate is. As you said a bounce can be a good and a bad thing. If you send a player to an operator is this in fact a bounce? I am not sure because you sent the player to a specific page they want to. I think more that a bounce is when the page itself will be closed. Also in this case it could be that the visitor immediately got the required information and left the page. So the bounce rate thing is not very clear to me.

[baldidiot]

Can this work for banners to make a custom sign up page and a regular lander pop up?

The code is purely for reporting additional event related data to analytics, so doesn't actually affect anything for the user.

[TravG]

If you send a player to an operator is this in fact a bounce? I am not sure because you sent the player to a specific page they want to. I think more that a bounce is when the page itself will be closed.

I agree kind of unclear, but I would think if the visitor leaves your website from a page (goes to a casino/poker/sports) that is a bounce. I dont think it should be because like you said you sent the visitor where they wanted to go. I am going to try the code above and see what kind of changes it brings.

[dfiocch]

Bounce rate prominency/importance depends site-by-site.
Usually a "thin affiliate" website, if the buonce rate is high, gooooggle tends to classify it as "a bad site, bad user experience".
If the site includes reviews, comment system etc... goooggole tends to rank it up. Of course if it has a decent buonce rate/visits ratio.

... with a constant: gouggle seems to hate affiliate sites... it seems (see penguin)

(based on my past experiments/experiences, just speculating)

[baldidiot]

I agree kind of unclear, but I would think if the visitor leaves your website from a page (goes to a casino/poker/sports) that is a bounce. I dont think it should be because like you said you sent the visitor where they wanted to go. I am going to try the code above and see what kind of changes it brings.

It wont bring any serp changes only give you a more accurate idea of what's happening on the site - even though you're using analytics google's search algo has no access to your analytic data. They've been asked about it in the past and formally said no. Besides, if they did it would be too easy to game - you could just set an event for time on page to be more than 1 second and you'd get a 0% bounce rate (or not have analytics on a site with a high bounce).

Having said that, I do believe that the behaviour of the traffic that visits your site does have an impact on search rankings, but more in terms of 'return to search' rather than what you're seeing as a bounce.

Ie: Regardless of how many pages a user views on your site, if that person repeats the search (either by clicking 'back' or by performing the search again) then it's a fairly good indicator that they didn't find the information they were looking for. On the flip side if the user goes to your site and doesn't repeat the search it's an indicator that the result was in fact relevant to the query.

[wettFORM.AT]

I am not sure if the repeat of a seach is an indicator for a bounce. In this case the bounce has to be noticed after a user dropped the page but I think that search engines see the bounce as soon as it happens and this is exactly when the user left the page. Maybe it is a time frame but this is still not a guarantee that it was in fact a bounce. I searched the web and found out that it is called a bounce when a user only visits one page. So a bounce can be a click on the back button, when the user closes the browser or enters a new website domain. It is also a bounce when the user waits for more than 30 minutes without any action. In this article I found out that a click on an external link is also a bounce. But as I said also a hight bounce rate not always a bad thing. It would be only interesting to know how the search engines evaluate different bounces and what are the impacts on the search results.