How bounce rate is calculated?

I just searched and noticed that Bounce Rate = Bounces divided by Entries

The definition of entries is:

Entries represents the number of times a given value is captured as the first value in a visit. Entries can occur only once per visit. However, it is not necessarily the first hit if the variable is not defined.

My understanding is each visit should have one entries. But somehow, entries number is much smaller than Visits. Why?

Thanks,

Great questions. It's possible for a Page to have a Visit, but not an Entry, if that page is not the first page viewed in a Visit. For example, if this is your visit:

Page A

Page B

Page C

The report you created would look like:

Pagename     Bounce     Visit     Entries          Bounce/Visits     Bounce Rate

Page A               0               1          1                         0                    0

Page B               0               1          0                         0                    0

Page C               0               1          0                         0                    0                    

You should never see: Bounce > Entries or Entries > Visits.

Does that help?         

Eric, you are right and this is helpful.

Right now, I feel very confused when combine bounce rate , entries and segment.

In our report, we have segment created for each division based on site section. When I was generating a bounce rate report for a division, then I noticed that if I just use pageview, visits metric, the report only include the pages from that division. Once I add bounce rate and entries metric, it involved a lot of pages are not for this division. It seems that it pulls in all the landing pages doesn't matter it is belong to this segment or not. It seems that my segment does not working anymore. So in the case, if I want to know the aggregated bound rate for the whole division, what should I do?

Could I know why right now, adobe implement like this? This really mess up the segment or virtual report suite.

Thanks

Most likely it has to do with your segment's definition. Can you share a screenshot of how it's defined?

Eric,

My segment is nothing special. Check the site section equal to division name. For example, if my division is "d1". Then all the pages in this segment should be:

domain\d1\page1

domain\d1\page2 etc

But when we have some visits:

visit1: d1\page1 ->d1\page2   ( bounce + 0, entries +1 )

visit2: d2\page1 ->d1\page1  ( bounce + 0, entries +1 )

visit3: d1\page1   ( bounce = 1 ,entries +1 )

When calculate  bounce rate for segment d1, by default( if I don't add additional filter):

bounce rate = 1/3 = 33.3%

Since in visit2, the landing page d2\page1 is not part of segment d1, when I calculate the bounce rate of d1, should I add a filter:entry page contain 'd1'? then the bounce rate will change to:

bounce rate = 1/2 = 50%

I guess my question is:  should bounce rate only consider the landing page? if so, then we don't care visit2, although it involved a d1 page.

Thanks

Thanks Eric. This is really helpful!