Google's John Mueller, once again, said that for SEO purposes, for ranking in Google purposes, you do not need to worry about your site's bounce rate. John said this on Reddit "Google doesn't use that for SEO, so if you're focused on SEO, you can ignore that."
The question on Reddit was "I work with a coding school and our main CTA — "Apply Now" — actually leads to one of our subdomains. If someone taps that CTA, will it count as an exit or will Google understand they're engaging the way we want them to?"
John Mueller replied "Google doesn't use that for SEO, so if you're focused on SEO, you can ignore that."
This has been the overwhelmingly consistent messaging from Google for over a decade, as recent as 2020 but 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Google said bounce rates are not good signals, in 2008 Google said it is a noisy signal and also in 2008 said click data is not used for rankings. This is a myth Google said but then you have people at Google misspeaking causing more confusion.
Forum discussion at Reddit.
