![]() | clearString neatComponents
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![]() | clearString neatComponents
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Using Google Website Optimizer |
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![]() | Techniques & KB Articles | ![]() |
Using Google Website Optimizer |
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GWO offer two types of test, which they call A-B and Multivariate. These names are misleading, as they actually represent two different ways to carry out tests, and real A-B tests can be performed by either.
GWO 'A-B' tests actually display one of two completely different pages – with different URLs – to the visitors.
Pros: Good for testing completely different looks
Cons:
as the URLs are different, may compromise internals links, site analytics,
the visitor may bookmark the experimental URL,
and search engines may crawl and promote the experimental URL.
GWO 'Multivariate' tests adjust the display of portions of the content on a page – the URL is unaffected. The Multivariate name is because you can be changing several portions at once, to see which combination works best, but it is quite happy to change a single portion, giving you an A-B test.
Pros: Doesn't suffer from all the 'cons' of the A-B test
Cons:
Hard to test completely different looks
Need to be mindful of search engines taking multiple embed options for duplicate content (but see below for the elegant solution to this)
With a multivariate test you identify a fragment of markup on the original page, and provide a replacement section via the GWO interface that will be used to display to some visitors.
Where this is a simple change, such as changing the font color, the replacement can be 'self-contained' in the GWO interface. However if the change is more substantial – lots of stylistic and even content changes, then it is undesirable to ask the GWO interface to handle it all (and for pages with dynamic content, impossible for GWO to handle).
In these cases, it is better to use the GWO to simply swap out the visibility of two portions provided on the original page. Typically this means adding the 'hidden' attribute to a DIV element surrounding the original portion.
If you are testing two different Query Views on a page, to see which works best, you need to embed both of them on the page. However, there is a danger than in doing so, even though one would be hidden, that search engines would interpret this as an attempt to trick them – as there would be duplicate content – and accordingly penalise the page.
To solve this problem, we set the alternate embed to be delivered not with the original page (where the search engines can see it), but use an Ajax request to call in the content after the page loads. Furthermore, we can set the embed to only be called in if the GWO system wants to display it to that particular visitor, thus saving the server the overhead of serving both embeds to everyone.
Visitors chosen to see the original content will see the original embed. If they (or a search engine) look at the HTML source they will not see the content of the second embed.
Visitors chosen to see the alternate content will see the second embed. The original embed will have been delivered in the HTML, but will be hidden, and the second embed will have been provided by the Ajax remote call (although the method of delivery should not be apparent to them).
GWO calls for several scripts to be included on the pages. These should be entered via the Behavior Editor's Scripts section.
GWO also has the requirement that you enter an unbalanced tag where the substituted content is located.
Normally tags are balanced, so for example a <strong> opening tag will be balanced with a </strong> closing tag later on. This balancing is not only 'normal', it is generally a requirement, so most text editors, including neatComponents, will helpfully tidy-up, adding in any matching tags or removing un-needed solitary closing tags. However, for GWO to function, it needs an unbalanced </noscript> tag to be entered.
To support unbalanced tags, neatComponents provides a comment-wrapper. By wrapping the unbalanced tag in this, the text-editor will not attempt to 'correct' it's unbalanced nature. Before the page is delivered to the browser the wrapper is removed, thus exposing the tag to the client ready for GWO.
The wrapper is:
<!--ncLiteral … ncLiteral-->
So for GWO usage, where they need:
</noscript>
You should enter:
<!--ncLiteral </noscript> ncLiteral-->
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