Google Experiments issues
-
Hey fellow Mozzers!
We're in the middle of working on CRO for a client of ours and we were going to try out Google Experiments for the first time.
Following the click path described on the Google help page should take me to an option that says 'Create Experiment', but this isn't coming up - do we need to create the various URLs before it will let us set up an experiment, or has the system changed now? I've found in the past Google has a habit of updating its interfaces but not the advice on using the affected tools, so wondering if I'm looking at old information?
Secondly, does the Experiment show a user the same variation of the page throughout their journey? What I mean by that is: their site currently has a real mish-mash of page styles, and I think a large part of boosting their conversions is probably down to ensuring consistency across the site as it currently seems like you're bouncing around different sites. But will this issue be made worse by running Experiments - ie, will I enter the site on Variation A, click a link and be shown the next page in Variation B and so on?
If so, are we better off running the experiment on one page at a time and using what we've learnt to impact the next page?
Thank for any help you can give!
Nick.
-
Hi Nick,
Regarding the path, you will need at least a second variation URL in step 2, but it does not need to be live. At the end of step 4, make sure there are no errors. The most likely error on step 4 is that the code is not on your page. You wouldn't want to click "start test" if the pages weren't live either, obviously.
Now to the question of showing the same page throughout the journey. Experiments does not do this by default; it's more of a landing page tool. There is a way to make it happen, and that's to change the navigation on the test version. I've seen companies either clone every page that links to the test with links to version 1 and 2 (yuck) or use a cookie that switches out all links to the original with the test version if a cookie is fired from the test version. The difficulty of doing this will vary based on your developer's skills and the CMS you're using.
These work-arounds are not ideal, and they introduce more potential errors - as all complexity does. It really only works for small sites and landing pages with limited paths in and out. If you're looking to keep the experiment consistent and run a lot of tests I would strongly recommend checking out a tool like Optimizely.
I've worked with Optimizely in the past, and had nothing but great experiences. Just make sure to test multiple screen sizes before you launch.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to fix canonicalization so Google shows our company's website and not LinkedIn
I work for a company that builds and manages apartments. I would like to know how we can fix canonicalization. You see, we have been posting our company's blog articles not only on our company's website, but also on LinkedIn. When people search for one of our articles, Google is displaying the article for LinkedIn. Except, that's not what we want. I'd prefer for Google to display our company's website, to drive more traffic to our website and not LinkedIn. For instance I just Googled the title to one of our company's blog article "Great Leadership is about Influence not Authority." The first thing to show up was a link to see the article on LinkedIn. There was nothing referring to our company's website. Here is a link to the LinkedIn account where we have been posting the blogs: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-leadership-influence-authority-mike-kaeding/ Here is a link to the same article, but on our company's website: https://www.norhart.com/blog/2018/08/08/great-leadership-is-about-influence-not-authority/ Why is Google showing the article for Linkedin and not our Company's website? Might LinkedIn have canonicalization over Google? If so, how might we be able to reverse this and drive people to our company's blog instead. Any ideas I'd greatly appreciate it! Thanks.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | mikleing0 -
Google showing in snippets last individual rating instead of aggregate rating
the product pages of my ecommerce site contain schema markup.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | lcourse
according to rich snippet tool from google all looks fine and properly formatted
however in the SERP google shows the last rating in the snippet instead of the aggregate rating. any idea how to show the aggregate ratings? URL: https://www.humidordiscount.co.uk/adorini-triest-deluxe-rosewood-humidor below extract of schema code as recognized by the rich snippet tool: Product name:adorini Triest Deluxe Rosewood Humidor image:https://www.humidordiscount.co.uk/952-large_atch/adorini-triest-deluxe-rosewood-humidor.jpg description:High-quality multiple ..... brand [Organization]: name:Adorini offers [Offer]: price:141 priceCurrency:GBP availability:http://schema.org/InStock aggregateRating [AggregateRating]: worstRating:1 ratingValue:4.5 bestRating:5 ratingCount:460 review [Review]: description:It 's my first .... reviewRating [Rating]: ratingValue:4 worstRating:1 bestRating:5 author [Thing]: name:Alessandro M review [Review]: description:excellent ... reviewRating [Rating]: ratingValue:5 worstRating:1 bestRating:50 -
PayPal Visits Increase in Referral Traffic in Google Analytics
We've noticed recently on an E-Commerce website that we manage that PayPal has recently shown a large increase in Referral Traffic on the website. Is anyone having an experience with this and how can we block it? It seems like its counting the traffic that leave to PayPal to complete a purchase and then return to the site as increased traffic. The increase started to occur around April 29, 2015 and I'm wondering if this has anything to do with any recent updates made by PayPal? Any insight or other experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SEO5Team0 -
Issue with a particular command of robots.txt! Help needed!
Hi all,I'm facing a strange issue with a website: www.foodmood.itI've written this robots.txt: www.foodmood.it/robots.txt in which I'm using all commands I've tested and used on other websites.The problem is that this website is not indexing correctly, and my fear is that I've written the robots in a wrong way.In this forum I've been taught that this command Disallow: /*? should be substituted with Disallow: /? in order to be sure the crawler is not indexing all the URLs containing a question mark.My question is: do you think this command modified in the above way can cause a problem to my website?I repeat that I've used it on several sites and this is the first time I'm having this kind of problems.Thanks in advance for your help.A.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | OptimizedGroup0 -
How can I track the lead to its referring site in my Google Analytics?
Hi, is there a way to track a lead (through funnel setup or similar) so I can see who the referring site is? I want to be able to be able to calculate ROI from display ads, social media initiatives and other partner integrations. Thanks.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Majsan0 -
How Do I Create a Google Analytics Dashboard for My Designer To Monitor Landing Page A/B Testing
Hello All, We recently started doing some "AdWords Experiments" using A/B testing of our search landing pages. My web design team does not have access to our AdWords account, but they do have "user" access to our Google Analytics account. What I need to figure out how to do is setup an easy dashboard (or custom report) that will show them at a quick glance how the two versions of their page are performing in terms of: Goal Completions (Conversions) where the specific page is the entrance/landing page. Bounce Rate Time spent on site where the specific page is the entrance/landing page. Pages viewed where the specific page is the entrance/landing page. Possibly a way to see the most popular page visited 'next' after starting on the specific entrance/landing page Anything else that might be useful The two URLs would be like: http://www.domain.com/search/testa/
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Robert-B
http://www.domain.com/search/testb/ Any insight about the best way to do this is greatly appreciated! Cheers!0 -
Is it advisable to use meta refresh for Google Website Optimiser?
We'd like to track conversions using Google's Website Optimiser, but the conversion page is hosted on a different sub domain so Google won't allow us to use this as the conversion page. The plan was then to add a blank page on the original domain that contains Google tracking code and a meta refresh to the page on the sub domain. We would then block this page in the robots file so Google doesn't try to index the page with the meta refresh. Does anyone see any harm that may come of this? Or any other way around the issue? Thanks in advance
Conversion Rate Optimization | | heatherrobinson0 -
How accurate is the Geo-Targeting of Google and Bing/Yahoo PPC ads?
I have a client who serves a local market and who has had trouble in the past with people out of her service area clicking on ads. She asked how accurate the geo-targeting option is. I know it's not possible to be completely accurate resolving the location of IP addresses, but was wondering if there are any recent statistics out there regarding how accurate or inaccurate geo-targeting is. I did some quick searches but did not see any current numbers. Many Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JKuly0