Dwell time is an amalgam of bounce rate and time-on-site metrics – it measures how long it takes for someone to return to a SERP after clicking on a result (and it can be measured directly from the search engine’s own data)
In industry study by Search Metrics found that the average Dwell Time for a top 10 Google result is 3 minutes and 10 seconds.
Longer dwell times are better for business. The more time a visitor spends on a page, the more likely they are to have read and understood your content. It’s a signal that your content strategy is working and appealing to your intended audience.
This metric is sometimes confused with Time on Page, but the difference is that with Dwell time, it is the 2nd click – Dwell time is measured when a person returns to SERPs page where as Time on Page measures time on page before navigating anywhere else