exit page

Exit page vs bounce

Every session has exactly one exit page, the point where the visit stops. GA4 records this with the Exits metric, which Google defines as how many times the last event in a session happened on a page. It lives in the Explore section (free-form explorations), not in the standard reports, so you build a custom table with a page dimension to see where visits end.

An exit is not the same as a bounce. All bounces are exits, but not all exits are bounces. In GA4 a bounce is an unengaged session, one that ends with no key event, under ten seconds, and no second pageview, while an exit can be the tenth page a visitor reads after a long, productive visit. A page’s exit rate is its exits divided by that page’s total pageviews, a different denominator than bounce rate, which is measured against sessions.

Context decides whether an exit is good or bad. A high exit rate on an order-confirmation or thank-you page is expected, since the visitor finished what they came for. A high exit rate on a category page, a pricing page, or step two of a checkout is a leak: people reached a page meant to move them forward and left instead. Common causes include slow load, weak internal links to the next step, mismatched search intent, or thin content that answered nothing. Reading exit pages against those factors turns a raw number into a list of pages worth fixing.