When discussing bounce rates, another term that frequently comes up is the exit rate. The difference between a bounce rate and an exit rate is sometimes not well understood since the two are somewhat similar. If the bounce rate is the number of single-engagement sessions a webpage has, the exit rate is the number of people departing a specific page, even if they didn’t originally land on it.
So, if a person lands on page 1 of your site and hits their browser’s back button to the referring page, that’s a bounce. But if they land on page 1, go to page 2, and then quit their browser or jump to another site, that’s considered an exit. Because they clicked to another page from page 1, that can’t be considered a bounce. Neither can page 2 since that’s not the first page the person landed on.
In terms of analysis, a bounce may indicate a lack of interest in a site, but a high exit rate could indicate you’re having problems with [conversion rate optimization (CRO). Although someone has shown enough interest in your site to visit more than one page, they’re likely going back to the search engine to find the answer they’re looking for.