Bounce Rate shot through roof

Hi, firstly, Love this plugin. Thanks for it!

Had begun with Clicky a 2-3 weeks ago. Everyday my bounce rate had been hovered between 23-32%

Then this past week my trial premium ran out and then those number shot sky high. Actually, looking at the logs it appears this began on the very day following the end of my trial run.

Sooooo, was there a feature in the premium that was keeping out bad numbers? or perhaps something different in the premium that reflected upon the Bounce Rate?

Thanks in advance for any insight. ;-)

Free accounts are not pinged, so there is no way to know how long someone stayed on the page of a one-page visit. It will simply be recorded as 10 sec and look like a bounce.

Aaaaah, okay. Now I know.

Thank you kindly for your help.

Hi, I've been experiencing the same issue; my premium account ended and two days later the bounce rate went through the roof and stayed there.

I understand that free accounts aren't pinged, and that single-page views will be recorded as 10 sec sessions, but I don't see how this should affect the bounce rate... Even if a user stayed on a single page for a long period of time, and I had the premium service and they were pinged, shouldn't it still count as a bounce in the statistics if they only viewed one page? Isn't that the definition?

In short, I don't understand why it should make a difference whether the user has been pinged or not: a bounce is still a bounce. Right?

So why the massive increase in bounce rate after the premium service dropped out? It shouldn't have changed, pinged or not, right?

Okay, just got to the bottom of this. I didn't realise that Clicky defines a bounce as either one page view or less than whatever seconds on a page. I think it was 15 seconds or something...

I'm not a fan...

Essentially, because the free versions aren't pinged, you're getting two different metrics for the same name. "Bounce" for a premium account means a real bounce, hard and fast, whereas "Bounce" for a free account means someone who didn't engage; a click.

They're two completely different things... I'm sure it's led to a lot of freaking out for people moving off the 21 day premium service onto a free subscription. I, for one, have spent the last week running through my site with a fine tooth comb, analysing all the data every-which-way (and pulling my hair out) trying to find the cause of the user's sudden lack of interest. I was sure I had a usability problem... I was panicking.

So. Not a fan. I understand that the definitions are the same, but it's due to this ping that the data sets reflect an entirely different metric. Can easily lead to misunderstandings, especially moving from one subscription to another...