Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is replacing Universal Analytics (GA3). To prepare everyone for the change, I’ve created a series of blog posts to help users understand the difference between the two versions. Today I’m comparing the difference between engagement rate in GA4 and bounce rate in Universal Analytics.
How Bounce Rate Was Calculated In Universal Analytics
Every time data was sent to Universal Analytics (GA3), it was called a “hit.” There were different types of hits, such as page hits, event hits, and ecommerce hits. Pageviews (page hits) and events (event hits) by default in GA3 were counted as an “interaction” hit. In contrast to a “non-interaction” hit, an interaction hit signifies to Google that the action occurred was of significance. Whenever a user only has one interaction hit in their session, it’s considered a bounce – someone left your website without completing two significant interactions. As a result, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that did not have a second interaction hit.
Based on this calculation, any Google Analytics account owner who had a large amount of event tracking on their website would naturally have a lower bounce rate. Account owners that did not implement any custom event tracking would naturally have a higher bounce rate.
How Engagement Rate in GA4 Is Different
When GA4 was first released, bounce rate wasn’t even included as a metric. This was done in an effort to put the focus on customers who actively consuming your website and contributing to your bottom line instead of focusing on users who abandoned your website. In short, GA4’s focus was all about engagement.
Unlike bounces, engagements had stricter rules. A session can only be considered engaged if a user had 2+ pageviews, a conversion, or a time threshold of your choosing, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds. This means that you can’t add event tracking in GA4 to lower your bounce rate, unless you count that event as a conversion.
Engagement rate is the rate of engaged sessions over total sessions. Due to increasing public pressure, Google finally released bounce rate in July 2022. However, the calculation is slightly different from the definition in Universal Analytics. In GA4 bounce rate is now just 1 – engagement rate.
Because bounce rate was so easy to inflate in Universal Analytics, if you had a super low bounce rate in Universal Analytics, don’t be surprised if it gets higher when you make the transition to GA4. Inversely, if your bounce rate was incredibly high in Universal Analytics, don’t be surprised if it lowers in GA4.
Looking Beyond Engagement Rate – Active Users & Session Engagement Time in GA4
Engagement within GA4 didn’t stop at engagement rate. Google also used this concept to help define two new dimensions – active users and session engagement time. The active users dimension describes those users who have had an engaged session at any point. This metric is helpful if you’re trying to separate out bot traffic from actual users.
Session engagement time sounds very similar to average session duration, but it’s important not to confuse the two metrics. Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 is able to measure when a user closes their tab, navigates to another website, or reloads the current page. More simply, Google knows when you’re actively engaging with a website versus when that website is in the background. GA4 uses this information to give us session engagement time – the time a user actively had your website in the foreground.
Summary
The shift from bounce rate to engagement rate is a big one, but a good one. Lean into the change and begin focusing on users who are driving your bottom line with engagement related metrics. GA4 is continuously rolling out new features. Learn more about GA4 reporting metrics with the blog articles below: