70% leaving the first page

what exactly do you mean "first page"?

are you referring to the overall Bounce Rate? a specific landing page?

if it's your homepage, do you have a cms, custom script, or using forum index?

Hey Joe,

First page being wherever they enter. Could be any really. It is just they they are not clicking any other links.

Edit: Joe being Princeton

ie. landing page? overall bounce rate?

sorry, it's just that people use different terms for different things .. hence, the "first page" question

Check out experiment #2:
http://www.1stsearchenginerankings.c...ch-data-is-in/

I get a 404 for that Joe...

Updated.

I fail to see how experiment #2 was much different from experiment #1. Both saw increases in rankings by users clicking on links in the SERP. The only difference was that they spent more time on the site. They should have continued to click on links in the SERPS after the experiment to see if it was the "bounce factor" or click through factor.

To me bounce rate doesn't mean that a user doesn't like your site. It could mean that the user found what they wanted on the first page and then left. I quite often view only 1 page of a site if I click through from a SERP. Sometimes I find what I want, sometimes I don't.

There's a really interesting javascript that I found the other day that keeps track of adsense clicks in analytics. It also allows analytics to be more accurate for time on page because it logs a final virtual page as they leave the site via adsense. Only problem is it inflates the page view count.

If anyone's interested in this javascript, let me know and i'll post some links.

I think bounce rate should be calculated based on the amount of time spent on the site. 15 minutes reading an article and then backing out, versus 1 minute and 7 page clicks searching for something, would lead me to believe time spent is the more critical factor.

You should post the link to the JS code just in case anyone is interested and happens by this thread.

I am curious as to whether the Google Toolbar tracks "focus".

That is, can they detect when you ALT-TAB to another window, etc. In this case, just clicking to a page and waiting some time before researching, or clicking another result would not be sufficient. They would actually be tracking whether or not the page was being actively viewed, and could even go so far as to check for mouse movement.

I'm not sure what the privacy policy for the Google Toolbar outlines, so this is just wild speculation as to the possibilities.