why use visits*bounce% for metric for specific referrer?

[H_L]

Hi there,

A question just come up to my mind: why people use Visits*Bounce% to evaluate the effective traffic from specific referrer?

It seems that Bounce, Bounce% are metrics match with Entries, for a site level Entries = Visits, but for a specific referrer, e.g. Organic Search or Referrer = Google.com, the Visits does not equal to Entries.

Will it more reasonable to use Entries*Bounce% as the metric?

E.g., when I set segment: visit level, referrer = google.com, then should use above metric instead of Visits*Bounce%.

Thanks.

H_L

[yuhuisg]

You're right that using Visits doesn't make sense because there could be more than 1 Referrer per Visit. But in most cases, people come to a website via one method each time. So it's generally okay to assume 1 Referrer per Visit. It's not 100% guaranteed, but by-and-large, it's okay.

BTW your suggestion of using Entries instead of Visits doesn't make any difference, because as you've said, Entries = Visits.

[H_L]

Thanks for the reply.

But for the last part of your reply, seems there is misunderstanding, what i mean "Entries = Visits" is for site or domain level, when apply to specific referrer, Entries does not equal to visits.

E.g., for one of our subdomain, 50% visits come from Search Engine, but 75% Entries from Search Engine.

So IMO, by using visits*bounce% is reasonable to site level but not reasonable to referrer type or referrer level.

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

Thanks for that clarification about what you had meant about Entries.

I think you're trying to answer the question: "When a user lands on one of my subdomains, what are the chances that he's going to bounce?" Based on your observation about Entries and Visits per subdomain, basing Bounce% on Entries makes the most sense. If Visits were used, I don't think you'll be answering that question properly.