Differentiating direct traffic from school computers that have it set as the default home page in Google Analytics

Question

I'm trying to get an accurate measure of site bounce rates for my school's website. However, all school computers have the school's site as their homepage, meaning any time somebody opens the browser the school site is visited, regardless of whether or not the user intended to visit the site. I feel that this has skewed the bounce rate, as many people visiting the homepage never intended to do so.

I'm aware that Google Analytics allows you to track traffic sources, but I can't seem to find a way to separate direct visits (i.e. people typing in the URL to visit) from homepage visits. Is there a way to do so?

Answer 1

Why not exclude the school's IP.

See: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034840?hl=en

Sorry. On my phone.

Answer 2

You can change the default page value in your school's computers to something like

http://www.example.com/?utm_source=computerlab&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=bounceratestudy

That will report out as a referral source named 'computerlab'

Of course, you'll need to manually change every browser to add the analytics tags. :/

Answer 3

A homepage is basically the same as a bookmark that is always opened upon starting your browser (Most browsers offer you to hit a home button to go back to your homepage). Google Analytics offers no way to track bookmarks (There is no corresponding parameter).

The referrer value that is passed to Google Analytics depends on where you come from. If you access your website via a bookmark after being to Facebook, the referrer information will be Facebook. Bookmarks will not automatically be attributed to direct traffic! See this source for a good explanation.

One way to track bounce rate reliably would be to create a landing page to be used as a home page for the school computers. So people who leave your school's website right away would never go past this landing page.