The Forgotten Split Test – a 3 Year Test!
Posted by David WhitehouseI was writing a post for the Dave Naylor blog about Google Analytics and Website Optimizer when I thought “have I ever done a split test?”, so I logged into Google Website Optimizer briefly and noticed the following test from 9th May 2007! And it was still running!!!
I’m not entirely sure what is happening over time, but it seems as those my initial test increased conversions by around 33%. But it seems over time that the effectiveness of this has decreased. The test in question was for an old site, originally designed by SEO Doofus, when he was at 9XB (sorry to point the finger Carps).
Here is the original:
And here is the alternative which performed significantly better (awful design I know – but it shows how it was a user interface problem rather than a “style” problem):
So this awfully designed changed actually increased conversions coming through the home page by 35%!!! So can anyone explain the convergence of the split test over time? I’m really perplexed!!!
Shockingly Bad Ads from AdSense
Posted by David WhitehouseSo I’ve been fiddling with my AdSense ads on my MW2 site – it’s getting quite a lot of page views, so I was interested to see why it was getting a low CTR, as I had placed some of my ads in highly visible areas… So I logged on to the site and checked the ads on the homepage – ok, then I clicked through to the first blog post I noticed and I saw this below (click to enlarge):
Now I don’t know about you guys, but I doubt the average Modern Warfare 2 player is going to have corporate team building on his mind right now, do you? So I think this is my current problem, Google is serving unrelated ads…
Does anyone know how I can get AdSense to put some better ads on it? I know you can target ads based on certain parts of text – is this is why I am being punished?!
Any suggestions welcome.
Getting Search Queries for Google AdWords in Google Analytics – Part 2
Posted by David WhitehouseOk so I’ve been doing a bit of research, and I still need to write the script and run a test, but here is the logic I have determined:
If referrer = Google and request_url contains gclid {
utm_keyword = strip_out_search_string(request_url)
}
My only worries is that if you have the Google Adwords Cost Data enabled that despite setting utm_keyword it may overwrite it. This is why I need to do a test. If there are any volunteers, let me know 
Getting Search Queries for Adwords in Analytics
Posted by David WhitehouseI think I have come up with a way to determine the search query used to trigger an keyword based ad and then input that data into Analytics.
I’m going to write a plugin for wordpress over the coming weeks – so if you want to see the terms a user searched for, rather than the keyword you bid on in Adwords, in your Google Analytics then watch this space.
The 5 Most Common Google Analytics Mistakes
Posted by David WhitehouseOk, so you lazy people out there, I know what your like, you just slap your Google Analytics code on the site and think that its done. Well your wrong, and your messing up valuable data right now! Here are the most common mistakes:
1. Failing to Exclude URL Query Parameters
Nobody ever seems to use this, its great though, it gets rid of all the crap out of the content reports. Every time a page loads with a query string (e.g. http://www.david-whitehouse.org/index.php?SirDickonTwitter=boring), Google Analytics treats it as a separate url to index.php. In order to prevent this, you simply put the variable name (e.g. ‘SirDickonTwitter’) in the handy little box (edit profile, edit main website profile information).
2. Failing to Setup Site Search
Again this is a similar problem to the one above. If you don’t state what your variable name is for the site search then url’s like: http://www.david-whitehouse.org/search.php?q=wanker and http://www.david-whitehouse.org/search.php?q=bagels will both be treated as separate content. Instead you just put ‘q’ in the site search query box and then get it to strip the url of parameters.
3. Goal Conversion Setup
I rarely see this one setup right, people often repeat the final step twice, as they don’t realise Google puts the final one in at the end. Most people don’t even bother setting this up, but the ones who do, tend to do it wrongly.
4. Ecommerce Script Setup
When your setting this up, you have to put your ecommerce code after your tracking code, or it won’t work. Most people just paste it in and adapt it, not realising they need the tracking script before hand and an if statement in their footer to prevent the tracking script showing there.
5. IP Exclusion Filters
If you are going to be working on a site, whether you are the developer/designer or the marketing agency, perhaps even the business owner – you need to be adding your ip address to the exclude filter on the profile (make sure you have an unfiltered profile as a backup though).
AdWords not linking to Analytics
Posted by David WhitehouseWe had a problem at work the other day where our AdWords account was not linking to Analytics. It wasn’t the autotagging option in AdWords and it wasn’t caused by us not choosing the ‘add cost data’ in Analytics, since this wasn’t an option.
The problem was caused on the 23rd/24th of March – Google switched over to their new system in AdWords, which meant all AdWords accounts can only have one Analytics account against them. Where they messed up was when an AdWords account had an Analytics account against it, it would choose the original. In many cases the original was no longer used and contained no information – something which I think they should have taken into account.
Anyway, to fix it you need to:
- log into the account with the email address of the account that was originally used
- Click on the Analytics tab
- Edit Account Settings
- Unlink from AdWords account
- Then go back to the Analytics tab and link it to the correct Analytics account (the logon will need access to the account in question)
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