Bounce rates and free sites

[ArtWilliams]

Originally Posted by RedCherry

Bounce rates are only surfers, as I understand it, that go to your site, and exit out (bounce out) without clicking any links.

And I agree, in of itself it doesn't mean anything. My problem too is with my AVS sites, NetVerifer does not track where the referring joins came from. So I haven't a clue what is converting my traffic. I get sales, I keep members, but which gallery/free sites/ se link they came from, I don't know. I can look and say, I submitted a free site yesterday, got a sale today, but is it from that free site, a gallery I submitted 2 weeks ago, or a link that is spidered in a search engine? That really drives me crazy.

Google describes "Bounce Rate" as,

"... the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy."

It doesn't say whether they close the window, type in a different URL or click on a sponsor link. Who knows.