‘Dwell time’ is a metric that quantifies the duration a user spends evaluating a page they discovered via the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The time measurement begins the instant the user clicks on the page and concludes when they navigate back to the SERPs or exit the page entirely.
Dwell time is sometimes informally referred to as ‘long clicks’. It measures how long (or how briefly) a user takes to assess the relevance and utility of a website before deciding to click through to a different page or try a different search result.
Dwell time is occasionally confused with ‘bounce rate’ or ‘session duration’, but these three metrics are quite distinct. Bounce rate refers specifically to the number of visits that consist of only a ‘single-page’ view on a site, while ‘session duration’ represents, simply, the average length of time a user spends on your site overall.
The fundamental difference with dwell time is that engagement with the SERPs marks both the beginning and the end of the time measurement. Essentially, the clock starts on the SERPs and stops when the user returns to that same location.