The figure of bounces does not match with figures in "Top Paths Through Site"

Avatar
Eddie Chan
  • updated
  • Answered
Just generate a report and it said as follows.

Top Bounce Pages

Entry Page Visitors Bounces Bounce Rate
1 http://xxx.yyyy.com/english/index.html 166,855 100,698 60.35%

Bounces is defined as: Bounce occurs when a user views only one page on the site.

But in "Top Paths Through Site" section

Path Visitors % of Total Visitors
1 /english/index.html 125,626 25.42%

and it tells there are 125,626 visitors just viewing "/english/index.html" only. So I expect there are more than 125,626 bounces. But why is the bounces number smaller than the total visitors with only one page paths?

Eddie
Replies 5
Avatar
0
Michael
The discrepancy may appear because the paths report "merges" repeating pages. It means that paths "/english/index.html", "/english/index.html -> /english/index.html" and "/english/index.html -> /english/index.html -> /english/index.html" will be listed as just /english/index.html, while only the first one will be counted as a bounce.

This "merging" applies to paths, e.g. "1 -> 2 -> 2 -> 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1 -> 1" will be shown as "1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1".
Avatar
0
Eddie Chan
In what circumstances, when does
"/english/index.html -> /english/index.html" happen?
Do you mean that there is/are some occasions that web users would refresh pages when viewing '/english/index.html'? But it would only count one visitor, right? and it should not treat as different web users, right?

Eddie
Avatar
0
Michael
Yes, it could be a page refresh. It can also occur if you use pages with different queries to should different content, e.g. /index.html?id=1 and /index.html?id=2. In such case if a visitor navigated from one of these pages to another, both these pages will be shown as /index.html in reports by default (it is possible to change it in the program settings), so it will be processed the same way as /index.html -> /index.html and will be shown as just /index.html in the Paths report.

Such requests will be counted as one visitor, while number of hits/page views will reflect the real number of requests/refreshes. In fact the Paths report is the only one that "merges" such duplicate requests for better presentation, all the other reports (including the report on bounces) treat them as multiple separate requests.
Avatar
0
Eddie Chan
If using the my data above,
100,698 visitors view only one page without refresh.
125,626 - 100,698 = 24928 visitors view one page with refresh.

Am I right?
Avatar
0
Michael
Yes, it is correct.