Can your bounce rate affect your ranking?

Do you know what is considered a bounce?I thought that when someone comes to your home page and leaves immediately without clicking on anything else that is a bounce .I assumed they stay 5 seconds or so.WRONG!!!!A bounce is when someone comes to your site and they can read your home page for 3 hours and then leave,that is a bounce.If they click through to another site from one of your links that is a considered a bounce if they dont come back to your site within 29 minutes.Never mind that now it looks like your bounce rate could affect your ranking.What happens to site owners who are trying to get free traffic by using Free Traffic sites whereby you surf other sites to move up in the ranking so that it is easier for other members to search your site.You have an allocated no of sites that you need to visit in one day to guarantee your ranking and believe me these members just click on your site and go just so they can gain that extra point.So those 2 actions now neutralise each other.You are trying to optimise by getting traffic and your bounce rate then neutralises that.What now?

Ok we can relax.From the comments below it confirms that your bounce rate will NOT affect ranking.Apparently it is just a myth.Phew!!! that is a relief

check out all the comments below on

Google Answers Bounce Rate Questions
By Chris Crum - Tue, 12/30/2008 - 10:24am.

What is Considered a Bounce?

Some questions about how bounce rate relates to SEO came up over at Webforumz, where our own Mike McDonald was kind enough to step in and try to get some answers about. Mike asked some questions to a couple of Googlers, and the following responses are the result of that. This should shed a little light on how Google takes bounce rate into account.
First Mike got a response from Google Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik:
If you're talking about bounce rates in the context of Google Analytics, I'm afraid you probably know as much as I do. I love the product, but don't know the ins-and-outs of it very thoroughly.

If you're talking about bounce rates in the context of Google web search and webmaster-y issues, then we really don't have specific guidance on bounces per se; rather, the key for webmasters is to make users happy so they find your site useful, bookmark your site, return to your site, recommend your site, link to your site, etc. Pretty much everything we write algorithmically re: web search is designed to maximize user happiness, so anything webmasters do to increase that is likely to improve their site's presence in Google.
Mike also sent a few questions to Matt Cutts, who forwarded them to Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, which produced a nice little Q&A:
Mike McDonald: What is the duration for a single page visit until it is no longer considered a bounce when a visitor leaves?
Avinash Kaushik: Bounce is a Visit level metric.
The definition is simple, if there is a Visit (a session technically speaking) with just one page view in it then it is considered a bounce. IE Someone came to your site, saw just one page, did not other action, left your website.
MM: What if a visitor lands on a page, and then visits another page within 5 seconds and then closes the browser. Is that considered a bounce?
AK: No bounce.
Remember time has no bearing on bounce computations. Just page views. In this case there are two page views in a session. No bounce.
The WAA standard definition of bounce rate, and that of Google Analytics, only considers the page view. Time has no bearing on the equation.
MM: When external links are opened in a new window (i.e. target_blank, rel="external", onclick=... etc) is it considered a bounce? Is there any difference between using HTML and Javascript to open a new window?
AK: Depends.
If in your external link popping strategy you are also sending a "hit" back to GA, as in this strategy....
Then the behavior you describe won't be considered as bounce because you have just sent a "hit" (a page view really) back to GA.
If in your external link popping strategy you are not sending a hit back to GA then if the person comes to your site, clicks on a link to leave the site, then that is a bounce.
Note that with Event Tracking (advanced AJAX, Flash, Flex, Video etc) released by the GA team Analytics can handle a lot more complex scenarios intelligently. Say if I come to your site. Watch the video you did with me at SES and leave. Most tools would consider that bounce. But if you are using GA and have event tracking for your videos (or 100% flash site) then that won't be considered bounce. In fact GA will accurately compute how long I stayed on your site, how much of the video I watched etc etc.
MM: If opening external links in a new window is considered a bounce, does it change anything if the user then comes back to the site which has remained opened and then starts browsing around?
AK: See above for first part of your answer. It depends on how you have encoded the external links (with ga tracking or not).
For the second part....
A session in Google Analytics (and pretty much every other web analytics tool out there) is "29 mins of inactivity". So I come to your site. See just one page. Go away to say google or whatever. Come back in 15 mins (or under 29 mins). Do another click. That's still the same session. No bounce.
Hope this helps.

This Spyware is dangerous

The spyware program is Spyware Protect 2009 and apparently does the following after you have installed it:
fakes a detection of spyware and malware on your pc.
floods your system with fake security alerts
hijacks your web browser and redirect you to websites that sell malware
And then you will be told that these can only be removed after you purchase the licensed version of Spyware 2009.
Quite a few reports on this from different places.

How to choose the best "earn money online" program

There are so many earn money online programs out there that it is very difficult to decide which one to choose and which ones actually work.
Make sure that the make money online program that you choose has the following to offer:

1-a money back guarantee

2- It is very important that the program offers learning methods on many ways on how to make money online.The aim is to be an online marketer and gradually develop towards a field which you find suits your needs and while doing so gain a vast knowledge on the Internet and its workings.

3-provides productivity tools,manuals,software and articles that are constantly maintained and updated.

4-provides practical tasks which you have to perform in the learning process

5-tutorials are based on first hand experience of the techniques involved

6-gives access to a blog with updates,advice,direction and tips

7-video tutorials.These are very easy to follow as they contain screenshots which makes learning faster.

8-offers you already set up money making websites that you can start earning from while you go about the process of learning how the Internet works.

9-do a search on review earn money online programs".Visit a few forums and see what others are saying.
10-Finally make sure that support is provided
Once you have made a short list of the earn-money-online programs which fit the above criteria I would suggest running them through Alexa so you can finalise your decision.

Alexa Ranking Tool
Alexa is a very powerful tool used to rank web site traffic. Find out how all the make money online programs rank compared to each other. This is one of the most accurate freely available tools to find out how well a site ranks up against millions of other sites on the Web.

Remember: "The lower the Alexa ranking number the more heavily visited the site.".
Some examples are:

amazon.com (rank 14); weather.com (rank 64); cnn.com (rank 26); google.com (rank 5); Yahoo.com (rank 1).

These rankings are generally consistent with the amount of traffic they have.
A ranking under 100 000 is considered good.This would tell you that many people visit this site.

The Alexa Ranking Tool also provides statistics as to which % of people from which countries are using this website.This further enhances the tool as you can see if people from your country are using this website which makes it more compatible to your individual needs.

It has been noted that the Alexa Ranking Tool results is slightly skewed as it only measures visitors with the Alexa Toolbar installed,What needs to be further noted is that most webmasters have this toolbar installed and this is the quality traffic you actually need to measure for the abovementioned exercise.
NB:Should you decide to blog for money some paid blogging sites such as ReviewMe,Text Link Ads and Sponsored Reviews are just three of the networks which base your ad selling strength on Alexa Ranks.

Bear in mind that despite the problems mentioned above with the Alexa Ranking Tool it is still the best way to check out rankings on the web.It is not 100% foolproof but will still give you the unfair advantage in getting that extra bit of information required before making an investment into the best earn-money-online program for you

West at Home-apply to be an agent

Becoming an agent for West at Home is not as easy as it sounds.In fact it is extremely easy to not be an agent for them.As soon as you enter what country you come from (not USA)you are given the following message:
"Thank you for your interest in West At Home. At this time, there are candidates that more closely match the qualifications required for this position. We appreciate your time to inquire about this opportunity and wish you luck in your future endeavors. Sincerely, West At Home."
My point is when you start exploring new avenues to make money you will encounter this quite often.Especially if it is a site that you are hoping to earn money from.So you need to not give up.I did an ALEXA rating on them and also found out that they do not cater to the country I come from.
Westathome.com
Westathome.com has a traffic rank of: 111,5371605
Westathome.com users come from these countries:
United States 87.8%
India 4.0%
Canada 1.5%

So I decided to find out what others think about West at Home and I got these comments

I personally would not recommend West...although, I currently work for them now. Definitely , do not expect to become rich, but do expect low pay and wasted time. What I mean by that is that you may be scheduled for 40 hrs but may actually only work 20-25 hrs. I value having wasted 20-15 hrs where I could have been more productive. IF working "40" hrs every week for two weeks and making 400-500 or less sound good to you then great, but for me it is just gas money;however, I do not work 40 hrs a week any more. Tested it for a month, thank god I have a great full time job. At west you do not get paid when your are sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. In a hour shift, you can just get one phone call. It has happen to me many times. I do understand that everything is relative, but when you do the math it is barely minimum wage. They had a guaranteed rate, but quickly did away with it. The company is very unorganized and inconsistent.

Hi, I used to work for West, but the pay was horrible! I now work for Alpine Access. I get paid $9 for 25 hours a week. It's a good part time income. I hate getting paid for talk time. It's taken me forever but I'm happy to finally find a WAHJ that pays hourly. They only hire in certain states. Teletech, CLC, Westat, & Onpoint all pay hourly as well. If you're just looking for 50 bucks a week and having to stalk for hours (hard to pic up) then sure West, is ok, but if you want money you can count on, look into the ones I listed. Hope this helps!Blessings,Kassandra

So now I feel better but to be serious there are different views out there on working for West at Home so to see all of them,good and bad please visit Work at Home Forum.com

N.B also received more avenues to explore from last comment above,namely Teletech,CLC,Westat and Onpoint.See what I mean,NEVER give up!!!

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