Toll Free: 1-877-695-7388

GTA: (647) 699-2838

Search Engine People
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • CRO
  • Display
  • Blog
  • Why Us
  • Contact
  • Join Our Team
  • Get A Quote

Toll Free: 1-877-695-7388

GTA: (647) 699-2838

How To Do Google-Safe A/B Testing

Joydeep Bhattacharya | March 22nd, 2017
Tweet2
Share14
Share
Pin
16 Shares

ab-testing

A/B Testing is the practical approach to test one thing against another.

The concern some SEO's and marketers have is that A/B testing could backfire. Concerns and questions such as:

  • What If Google perceives my tests as an attempt to spam?
  • Is A/B testing even allowed by Google?
  • I’ll need to work with duplicate content to do these tests, is that allowed?
  • How can I keep my test pages out of the Google index?

What Does Google Think About A/B Testing?

Google has often stated that A/B and multivariate testing are genuine marketing activities that don't deserve a penalty in any way.

In fact, Google Analytics itself is a pretty good tool for A/B and split testing!

Google  acknowledges the need of A/B testing, and suggests some best practices:

  • Use rel=”canonical”
  • Use 302s for redirecting
  • Experiment only as much and as long needed

A/B Testing And Duplicate Content

Many A/B tests involve a design element, leaving the content untouched. So now you have two pages with identical content. Problem?

Google has said many times that there is no duplicate content penalty. John Mueller says that the main effect is that Google picks one version to show. And that if you have a huge amount of duplicate content, crawling new content can be affected.

Google Analytics Experiments let you run tests like this, which means Google acknowledges the need.

Isn't A/B Testing Cloaking?

When you show one thing to users and another thing to Googlebot, that's cloaking.

Google doesn't like to send searchers to cloaked pages because what the user will see, is not what Google actually recommended.

But when you follow Google's best practices for testing and treat Googlebot just like you would any user, there's nothing to worry about.

As John Mueller puts it:

"So from our point of view, you should treat GoogleBot like you would any other user. So if you are doing A/B testing then GoogleBot probably needs to fall into one of those A or B test, how many variations you are testing slots as well."

Never-ending A/B Tests, And How To Avoid It

In the best practices post Google says to not run a single test unmodified for too long.

John Mueller expands on that:

"With regards for the duration, we just recommend to kind of keep it reasonable. In the sense that you shouldn’t be doing an A/B test for an extended period of time where you can say well, it is not an A/B test anymore, it is essentially the stable state for the site. So that is something where we don’t have any fixed time but kind of need to look at it on your site.

Some sites do regular A/B testing, that they go A/B and that they test it for a month and then they test other variations and next variations and they continually test and that is fine too."

Good A/B test tools can tell you when there is enough data. Check how your tool deals with statistical significance.

Hand-Picked Related Articles:

  • Multi Armed Bandits & A/B Testing: Which Makes You More Money
  • Quick, Affordable A/B Testing With PPC
  • 13 WordPress Conversion Testing Plugins

* Adapted lead image: Public Domain Dedication (CC0) Public Domain, pixabay.com via getstencil.com

Tweet2
Share14
Share
Pin
16 Shares
Posted in SEO

About the Author: Joydeep Bhattacharya

Joydeep Bhattacharya is the author of Seo Sandwitch Blog where he shares latest stuff and articles related to SEO, SEM, PPC and Social Media. He has a real passion for SEO and he loves to be associated with the ever changing field of internet marketing.

Seo Sandwitch

Recent Posts

  • Maximizing Your E-Commerce Sales:
    A CRO Audit Guide
  • Movin’ On Up! Why Migrating to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Should be a Priority
  • A Year in Review: The Digital Marketing Trends That Defined 2021
  • The Basics of Video Marketing
  • Just How Much Do Google Reviews Impact Your SEO Ranking?

Categories

  • Analytics & ROI Analysis
  • Company News
  • Content
  • Conversion Optimization
  • CRO
  • Display Advertising/RTB
  • Email Marketing
  • En Español
  • En Français
  • Inbound Marketing
  • Lead Nurture & Marketing Automation
  • Local Search
  • Marketing
  • Mobile
  • Partnership Marketing
  • PPC
  • PR
  • SEO
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Web Design

Additional Posts

Are You Making These 5 Customer Retention Mistakes? Pardon Your Poor ROI!

March 21st, 2017 | by Heba Hosny

How To Check If Your SSL HTTPS Website Still Uses HTTP URLs

March 20th, 2017 | by Ruud Hein

Top 5 Social Media Monitoring Tools To Track Your Brand Keywords

March 17th, 2017 | by Aleh Barysevich

LET'S TALK

Need more information or want to get in touch?

Get in touch!
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Display
  • Blog
  • Why Us
  • Join Our Team
  • Contact Us
  • Local SEO
  • Small Business SEO
  • Enterprise SEO
  • International SEO

LOCATION

1305 Pickering Parkway,
5th Floor Pickering, L1V 3P2

PHONE

Toll Free: 1-877-695-7388
Greater Toronto Area: (647) 699-2838

Social

© Search Engine People Inc. 2023 – Canada’s Top Digital Agency
© SEP 2023 – A Search Engine People Company | Privacy Policy

Search Engine People