Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions in GA4 that were engaged. A session counts as engaged if it meets at least one of three conditions: it lasted longer than 10 seconds, it included a key event, or it had two or more page or screen views. The 10 second timer can be raised to as much as 60 seconds in the web data stream’s tag settings. A longer timer gives a stricter measure, so engagement rate drops and bounce rate rises, without any change in visitor behavior. Note the setting when comparing reports over time.

Bounce rate in GA4 is simply the reverse. If 600 of 1,000 sessions were engaged, engagement rate is 60% and bounce rate is 40%. They always add up to 100%.

This is not the bounce rate from Universal Analytics. The old version counted any single-page session as a bounce, even if the visitor spent five minutes reading. In GA4, that same visit is engaged because it passed 10 seconds. That is why a site’s bounce rate usually drops after moving to GA4, without anything on the site changing.

Average engagement time is the related metric that shows how long the page was actually in focus in the browser, which is more honest than old time-on-page figures.

Engagement rate in GA4 also means something different from engagement rate on social media, where it measures likes, comments, and shares relative to reach or followers.