Site re-design, full site domain A/B test, will we drop in rankings while leaking traffic
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We are re-launching a client site that does very well in Google. The new site is on a www2 domain which we are going to send a controlled amount of traffic to, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% to 100% over a 5 week period.
This will lead to a reduction in traffic to the original domain.
As I don't want to launch a competing domain the www2 site will not be indexed until 100% is reached.
If Google sees the traffic numbers reducing over this period will we drop?
This is the only part I am unsure of as the urls and site structure are the same apart from some new lower level pages which we will introduce in a controlled manner later?
Any thoughts or experience of this type of re-launch would be much appreciated.
Thanks Pete
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Hi Pete,
Links to 2 articles below that reference A/B testing and their impact on SEO. The use of canonical tags is a recommended practice for the URL's being tested:
Website Testing - Google Search
Cheers,
SEO5..
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