Comments on: How to Split Test WordPress Themes

By: Holger

Holger — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:12:31 +0000

Hi Lee,

I think there went something wrong with my last comment so I post it again.

I am no programmer but I think you can filter SE bots by user agent (at least the SE bots from the main SE like Google, Yahoo, Bing):
support.google. com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1061943
useragentstring. com/pages/useragentstring.php

Perhaps have a look in the sorucecode of phpabtest, which claims to filter SE Bots:
phpabtest. com

See also
“It also filters out all bots and shows them your control page so that it doesn’t affect your SEO efforts.”
visualwebsiteoptimizer. com/split-testing-blog/server-side-ab-testing-using-phpab-what-is-it-and-why-should-you-care/

Hope this helps. What do you think?

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:33:16 +0000

nevermind… got it working… thank you

By: Holger

Holger — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:37:39 +0000

Did you recieve my last comment? Think it’s gone into the spam filter, cause it has three links as reference.

Not shure if there was another problem, cause there is no message for waiting moderation.

By: Lee

Lee — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:40:12 +0000

I don’t have any idea how to reliably identify SE bots, any ideas?

By: Holger

Holger — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:03:58 +0000

Hi Lee,
your plugin looks nice, but for SEO I highly recommend to filter search engines to always get the default template (think this is the intention Anton asks about this, too.)

Depending on how big your changes between the themes are, the sourcecode and content position could differ strongly. This could have an impact on your search engine ranking cause search eingines reappraise your content relevance when it is changed (even if it is just the content position).

If you run a test with a few different themes varieties and the crawler (as it will not be the same every crawl) always sees another mixed sourcecode, this isn’t a good idea and can induce problems.

As the SE bot isn’t relevant for the a/b testing, he should always see the default template to avoid SEO problems.

Can you implement this?

Best Regards

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:47:35 +0000

Thanks Lee… I can see the tagging… however, it is only one…

on Custom Variable (Value 01), I only got “The Gem Bank” and no “The Gem Bank V2″

Custom Variable (Key 01), I can see “SplitTestTheme” – I don’t why this show up…

but anyway… thanks a lot…

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:13:24 +0000

That is yoast’s plugin, but looks like you’re running a pretty old version as the Analytics code it’s spitting out is the old-style code, so I don’t think the integration will work. I’d suggest updating to the most recent version which should work fine.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:34:45 +0000

I’m not using any yoast plugin though, only Google Analytics for WordPress… here are a few screen shot i got

http://www.screencast.com/t/QUO8Xu4cA5T – SES Plugin on WP
http://www.screencast.com/t/w3ULORE1 – Segments Setup
http://www.screencast.com/t/flYUlrkO3uH – Stylesheet Theme Name
http://www.screencast.com/t/NlCPNU57o7 – FTP folders of the themes

I’m checking the correct segments on the analytics dashboard.. I only got two themes to split test…

By: Lee

Lee — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:18:54 +0000

It shouldn’t matter that you have spaces in the theme name. Make sure you’re checking the right segment – I think the tracking has probably changed a little since the article.

This comment (And the dialogue following it) might help:
http://www.leewillis.co.uk/how-to-split-test-wordpress-themes/comment-page-1/#comment-1336

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:31:35 +0000

hi lee…

It’s been several days now… still i don’t see that tagging data on the analytics segment..

In your screenshot you got there mytheme and mytheme_2.
Is that the name of the folder of the theme? Or is that what you place on the stylesheet code?

If it is the folder name of the theme… I have space on mine… ex: “My Theme Ver2″ and “My Theme Ver1″.. is this okay?