Let's take a look at another drawback. If somebody arrives directly on your landing page from other website, sees a link to another external website that you recommend visiting and clicks on it before the session timeout - a bounce will also happen.
There are so many other cases when the bounce is registered that you can not even imagine. If you are a seasoned Internet power user or even a regular surfer and you leave the page by typing directly URL in your browser and leaving that page ... You guessed right - a bounce will definitely happen. Or if you closed the tab or shut down your browser while surfing - that site will get a bounce for sure. Many of us are still prone to using "Back" button on the browser, this also may cause a bounce as well.
All mentioned above still does not mean that you should not use Bounce Rate metric for your web analysis. All web traffic metrics have their drawbacks and shortcomings. I will try to tell about them in my future blog entries. It just means that you, as a web analyst or search engine marketer should be aware of the side effects and take them into consideration right from the start when you create SEO web design, during the development of the site, etc.
Evidently, the best way of dealing with side effect is to pro actively work on segmentation of your web traffic. Then you will understand better why potential clients came to your site but did not engage and left. If you value your web traffic, you will use segmentation in combination with bounce rate for everything: referring sites, pay per click campaigns and top pages.
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