Google Launches Website Optimizer

Rockgod writes "Google Analytics Senior Manager Brett Crosby unveiled the tool, called Google Website Optimizer, this morning at the eMetrics summit in Washington D.C. If you find web site traffic heat maps like CrazyEgg, ClickDensity or Google Analytics' own heat map interesting, this looks like the next generation of that kind of tool. If Google's Website Optimizer can score high on usability, I expect it to be a big hit with small and medium size website publishers."

Re:Optimising Slashdot

[tuomasr]

Well, it seems that this is a tool for AdWords users. The demo says "Google AdWords Website Optimization" and the sign-up thing reads:

We're currently accepting sign-ups from AdWords Advertisers who are interested in participating in this beta test. We may not be able to guarantee invitations to everyone, but will be working hard to make this tool generally available to all AdWords customers in the near future.

The front-page is misleading though, as it doesn't state anything about AdWords.

Re:Enhancing your ability to get ads

[plover]

it's not for us.

My "google-analytics.com" Adblock Plus entry had pretty much ensured that it wasn't for me regardless.

Now, if NoScript had "blacklisting" that would be even better. I currently don't like NoScript because of the bar that's constantly at the bottom of every site with scripts by google-analytics, tacoda, imrworldwide, omniture or hitbox (which is pretty much everyone.) Once I've visited a site I don't want to remember whether or not I've cleaned it up -- I'd use the presence of the warning bar to remind me. Oh well, the author says it's coming someday.

"algorithm" ..or google users?

[adam]

I'm somewhat unclear on this, and I watched 80% of the flash demo linked above before getting insanely bored (mostly due to the pace) and letting my ADHD take over. From what I can tell, they are implying that this is not an algorithm doing the "checking" of your web site, but rather human editors/users. The flash demo mentions testing optimization of images as well, which I believe wouldn't be something easily automated through an algorithm (at least not easily automated to derive USEFUL results). However, i'm a bit confused because they aren't very specific as to who or what will be testing your site for clickthru/etc. At some point I started to think "oh, okay, google editors/volunteers will be testing it" (much like the google image labeler [google.com] beta linked from /. a few weeks ago).. and then i started to suspect they are actually just using the code to run multiple "live" versions of your site and let NORMAL google users view them in a random distribution and then see which ones stay (and buy) and for how long etc. But maybe I just misunderstood and got distracted 5 seconds before they explained this haha. Anyone with the answer?

If it really is the latter method, I am sure it would work for some web sites, but I know for our company's site, we can only ever display one version of our content, as any minor changes at all tend to draw a lot of industry attention (i.e. "hey what are these guys up to.. their site updated.. OMG is the next big product about to drop, blah blah").. so I hope that out of the three methods, it's either an algorithm, or a small subset of google trustees/volunteers. But then again, our industry (digital cinema) is a typical and I'm sure no matter which method, this will work great for mom & pop selling Pokemon trading cards or whatever.

Re:Enhancing your ability to get ads

[paralaxcreations]

actually, google analytics does help you. Website statistics help the web master know what visitors do and do not want to see. Allowing google analytics to track your anonymous movement through a site ultimately leads to a more fulfilling user experience.

At my job, I am rather far removed from the finances, yet I am supposed to decide what and how to market. Analytics lets me do that by tracking what sells, when it sells, etc.

Does it help Google? Of course. But it also helps the webmaster of the sites you visit to create sites you want to see.

Re:If google really want to optimize things..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they also fix their caching policy,
when you set a page to "noindex" in the metatags
google does not display a index or cache of the page
(which is what it should do).

After a few months though, if you change the content
of the webpage and remove the "noindex" metatag,
it magically displays the cache of the page you told
it to not index!! (what it shouldn't do)

Similiar problems occur when telling the robot to
"noarchive" (index page but do not cache)

So basically google saves the page when you told it
not to save the page. It just hides the page from listing
when it is active. If that is not evil, I don't
know what is. AFAIK search engines should abide to
spider/robot etiquette. Google doesn't.

Alexa Internet Archive has similiar behaviour!

Re:Enhancing your ability to get ads

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I agree google analytics is helpful. However, it also increased my page load times by a long shot, so it had to be removed. It simply doesn't serve fast enough.

Did you try putting the Javascript somewhere other than the <head>? Obviously that's the recommended place, but in fact most of the functionality still works if you bury the Javascript down as close to </body> as it will go, and that should have less effect on the effective[1] page load time.

Rich.

[1] By "effective" I mean the time until the browser can render the page for the user, rather than the total load time.

Google Launches Website Optimizer

[Anonymous Coward]

Google will soon be more of a problem to web users than help. Here is how my bitter taste with Google became sour. We share a computer at home and my sister and parents do not change the settings (on shared PC) much. While I enabled Javascript the other day, she had to call me on cellphone at work since no web pages were loading (mozilla). I drove back and did a check. Something to do with google syndication or analytics. This machine is clean of spyware. So I reset the browser and all was okay again. The Telcos were right. AT&T was right demanding that Google pay for bandwidth. I thought AT&T was playing politics demanding fees from google. I have since changed my opinion. Google will make the net crawl.