GA4 doesn't show bounce rate by default because Google shifted focus to "engagement rate," which measures sessions longer than 10 seconds, with a conversion, or with multiple page views. Bounce rate is technically available but hidden—it's the inverse of engagement rate (bounce rate = 100% minus engagement rate). To surface bounce rate in GA4, open any standard report like the Pages and screens report under Engagement. Click the pencil icon (Customize report) in the top right, then Metrics. Click "Add metric," search for "Bounce rate," and add it. Save the report, and bounce rate now appears as a column. You can repeat this for any report you customize—Landing page reports, traffic source reports, etc. GA4's bounce definition differs from Universal Analytics. UA counted a bounce if someone viewed one page and left. GA4 counts a bounce only if the session was completely unengaged: under 10 seconds, no events beyond page_view, no conversions. This means GA4 bounce rates tend to run 15–30 percentage points lower than UA rates for the same traffic, because a user who reads one article for 45 seconds is engaged in GA4 but bounced in UA. At Ottawa SEO, we track engagement rate as the primary metric for content quality and user intent match, especially on informational pages where someone might read one long-form answer and leave satisfied. For transactional pages (service pages, product pages), we watch both engagement rate and event conversions (form fills, calls, chat opens). If engagement rate is high but conversions are low, the page holds attention but fails to prompt action—usually a CTA or trust signal issue. If engagement rate is low and bounce rate is high even by GA4 standards, the page likely mismatches search intent or loads too slowly. Don't obsess over bounce rate in isolation. A 70% bounce rate on a blog post answering a specific question can be perfectly healthy if average engagement time is 90+ seconds. Context and user intent matter more than the number itself.