In Google Analytics will a search query count towards a high bounce rate?

Question

I'd like clarification if someone can provide it.

Once I filter out pages like this:
/Search.aspx?q=thermal labels

My site bounce rate significantly reduces. I believe it's correct to assume that if you want an accurate site bounce rate, you'd need to just look at 'real' pages on your site, not 'queries'.

Can someone tell me if I'm correct in this assumption? (Same goes when I filter out 404's)

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you have a high bounce rate on internal search pages this means they are also landing pages and most probably appear in Google search results. Just check their source / medium to verify. From SEO standpoint it's not advisable to allow search engine spiders to index such content. It's not user-friendly and if your site visitors don't continue to browse your pages and generate a second hit, the results they see are not useful for them.

If you want to better understand your bounce rate you can look at the landing pages by their traffic source.