Studying "Bounce Rate" and "Average Visit Duration" on the Iranian University Library Websites: Correlation Analysis

Purpose: Nowadays, average visit duration through the university library websites and bounce rate of the web users, are two important factors from the standpoint of Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The main objective of this paper is to study the two mentioned factors in Iranian university library websites and interactive relationship analysis between them.Method: This study opted for the webometrics approach. The research community was ۴۲ library websites of Iranian governmental universities affiliated with the ministry of science, except Payam- Noor and Farhangian. These mentioned websites were analyzed by the descriptive and analytical survey methods. The data had been extracted by the "Similarweb" analytical tool (۳ months: January to March ۲۰۲۰). Three software, "SPSS۲۲", "Excel" and "LibreOfficeCalc", were used for data analysis.Findings: The lowest (best) bounce rates from the library website were observed in the websites of the Central Library of Allameh Tabatabai University and the Digital Library of the University of Guilan, respectively. The highest (best) "average visit duration", was observed in the digital library websites of Isfahan university of technology and the university of Tehran, respectively.Conclusion: The "bounce rate" of members of the research community has been observed between ۱۳% and ۱۰۰%. Also, "average visit duration" has been seen from ۰ to ۳۰۰ seconds. Iranian university library websites from the standpoint, two factors that impacted Google SEO, have been seen in the weak level. A significant inversely correlation was obtained between "Bounce Rate" and "Average Visit Duration" in ۴۲ Iranian governmental university library websites with an amount of ۰.۶.

Keywords:

Web Visibility , User Engagement , university library , Search Engine Optimization (SEO)