Is Bounce Rate A Yandex Ranking Factor?

TLDR: Maybe.

We know in Yandex that behavioral factors (used to discern site and content quality) play a weighted role in rankings, similar to how behavioural factors work in Google, and the concept of pogo-sticking (the act of moving to and from the SERP and results.

In Metrica and Google Analytics, this registers as “Bounce Rate”.

Metrica does however report on a number of other user interactivity points, including page depth %, loyalty, and time since penultimate visit.

In my opinion, Bounce Rate as we see it in Metrica is not a ranking factor – but Yandex does use some form of monitoring at a query level to better ascertain with results are a good fit for users.

Some Russian SEOs advocate that reducing the bounce rate is a pivotal SEO tactic, and have case studies to back this up – but from my own anecdotal experience, just improving this metric (going hand in hand with a number of other positive site activities) leads to more of a correlative result than a causation.