Dwell Time
Dwell time is how long a searcher stays on your page before returning to the results. It sits between bounce rate and time on page conceptually. Google has never confirmed using it directly, but it reflects whether a result satisfied the query.
Why it matters for your rankings
Dwell time is the clearest expression of a question Google definitely cares about: did this result answer the query? A searcher who clicks, reads for four minutes and never returns to the results has been satisfied. One who bounces back in three seconds has not.
Whether Google measures it in exactly this form is disputed and probably unknowable. What is not disputed is that pages people abandon immediately tend to lose rankings over time, whatever the mechanism. Treating dwell time as a design principle rather than a metric is the productive approach: make the first screen answer the promise of the title, then earn the next scroll. Chasing artificially longer sessions by hiding the answer achieves the opposite of what you want.
How to check it on your site
Use engagement time as a proxy
GA4 reports average engagement time per session. Segment by landing page and organic traffic to approximate dwell.
Compare against content length
A three thousand word guide with forty seconds of engagement is not being read. Either the content or the intent match is wrong.
Check the promise of the title
If your title implies a quick answer and the page opens with eight hundred words of preamble, expect fast returns to search.
Watch scroll depth
Add a scroll event in GA4. Where readers stop is usually where the page stops being useful.