Google Analytics Audit Test #

72

Irregularly Low Bounce Rate Landing Pages

Why It Matters:

Critical to understanding website behavior.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Accuracy

How accurate is your recent data?

Insight Category:

Behavior

Can you tell what visitors are doing?

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Background

A GA4 audit is essential for uncovering missing insights—key data points that organizations don't yet know and can act upon. A well-done audit evaluates both behavioral tracking and traffic attribution, ensuring each is accurate and useful. It also assesses whether the data collected truly supports business decisions and reporting.

Test Detail

This test identifies landing pages with suspiciously low bounce rates (e.g., <5%), which can often indicate a tracking issue rather than exceptional engagement.

Google Analytics defines a "bounce" as a session that lasted less than 10 seconds, had no conversion events, and only one pageview or interaction.

If engagement is being triggered automatically—such as duplicate page_view events or misconfigured scroll, click, or engagement_time_msec events—bounce rate can become artificially low.

This skews performance analysis, overstates the value of certain landing pages, and undermines your understanding of what content is truly holding attention.

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How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In Google Analytics > Reports > Engagement > Landing Page, add the Bounce rate metric.
    • Sort by landing pages with high traffic and very low bounce rates (e.g., <5%).
    • Flag pages where:
      • Sessions have 0–1 pageview but are not considered bounces
      • Bounce rates are significantly lower than site average with no clear reason
      • Use DebugView or Tag Assistant to inspect those pages for:
        • Duplicate page_view events
        • Engagement events firing automatically on load (e.g., scroll, click, video_start, etc.)

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How To Fix

  • Check for duplicate tags firing on landing page load:
    • In Google Tag Manager or site code, ensure page_view is not triggered multiple times
  • Audit engagement events:
    • Only trigger events like scroll, click, or view_item based on user action, not auto-load
  • Avoid setting up engagement-time thresholds or other signals that artificially reduce bounce rate
  • For single-page apps (SPAs), make sure router-based virtual pageviews are configured properly and not inflating metrics
  • Hire a pro to clean up your event strategy and restore accurate bounce reporting.

Tips from a Google Analytics Consultant

Focus on Insights

Every Google Analytics audit should result in a plan for more insights.

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An insight is:

  • something you don't know
  • and can act on to improve performance

The Goal

Identify and remove insight blockers. Don't get tempted to track things you can't act on!

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