What's the best way to A/B test new version of your website having different URL structure?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Hope you're doing good. Well, we have a website, up and running for a decent tenure with millions of pages indexed in search engines. We're planning to go live with a new version of it i.e a new experience for our users, some changes in site architecture which includes change in URL structure for existing URLs and introduction of some new URLs as well.
Now, my question is, what's the best way to do a A/B test with the new version?
We can't launch it for a part of users (say, we'll make it live for 50% of the users, an remaining 50% of the users will see old/existing site only) because the URL structure is changed now and bots will get confused if they start landing on different versions.
Will this work if I reduce crawl rate to ZERO during this A/B tenure? How will this impact us from SEO perspective? How will those old to new 301 URL redirects will affect our users?
Have you ever faced/handled this kind of scenario? If yes, please share how you handled this along with the impact. If this is something new to you, would love to know your recommendations before taking the final call on this.
Note: We're taking care of all existing URLs, properly 301 redirecting them to their newer versions but there are some new URLs which are supported only on newer version (architectural changes I mentioned above), and these URLs aren't backward compatible, can't redirect them to a valid URL on old version.
-
Hi Martijn,
Yeah, not planning to block them from robots.txt of course. By blocking, I meant reducing the crawl rate to ZERO temporarily to make sure we're not creating any URL related confusions for bots.
But, this might not be a good solution for our customers as customer might be redirecting to /new-url for the first hit, which might give him an error for in the next session.
-
Hi Nitin,
Yes, that's why I mentioned that you should block these URLs via robots.txt so bots don't even find them in the first place.
-
Hi Martijn,
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this, really appreciate that.
But, the problem here is, we're planning to launch some of the new urls which aren't backward compatible. Hence, exposing them to bots isn't a good idea, they won't work for old website.
Also, if I 301 redirect the /old-url to /new-url, would need to redirect it back to /old-url if hit goes to old website. This might confuse bots.
Btw, number of URLs affected by this is, the almost whole website i.e a very large number of indexed pages.
-
Hi Nitin,
Don't change the crawl rate for an A/B test, it probably will hurt you more in the long run that it will do any good for the time being. In this case it also depends on how many URLs are affected by the change, if it's only 1 page that we will have a duplicate then I really wouldn't worry about it if it's a dynamic page with thousands of it then please make sure you will block these pages via the robots.txt so search engines won't find them in the first places.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blacklisted website no longer blacklisted, but will not appear on Google's search engine.
We have a client who before us, had a website that was blacklisted by Google. After we created their new website, we submitted an appeal through Google's Webmaster Tools, and it was approved. One year later, they are still unable to rank for anything on Google. The keyword we are attempting to rank for on their home page is "Day in the Life Legal Videos" which shouldn't be too difficult to rank for after a year. But their website cannot be found. What else can we do to repair this previously blacklisted website after we're already been approved by Google? After doing a link audit, we found only one link with a spam score of 7, but I highly doubt that is what is causing this website to no longer appear on Google. Here is the website in question: https://www.verdictvideos.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rodneywarner0 -
Should I change client's keyword stuffed URLs?
Hi Guys, We currently have a client that offers reviews and preparation classes for their industry (online and offline). One of the main things that I have noticed is how all of their product landing page urls are stuffed with keywords. I have read changing url's will impact up to 25% traffic and to not mess with url's unless it is completely needed. My question is, when url's are stuffed with keywords and make the url length over 200 characters, should I be focusing on a more structured url system?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricLee1230 -
Revert to old domain w/ better DA/PA or stick with new one?
I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. The new domain is http://www.bohmkalish.com and the old domain was http://www.ssdlawcalifornia.com. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish1230 -
Pagination and View All Pages Question. We currently don't have a canonical tag pointing to View all as I don't believe it's a good user experience so how best we deal with this.
Hello All, I have an eCommerce site and have implemented the use rel="prev" and rel="next" for Page Pagination. However, we also have a View All which shows all the products but we currently don't have a canonical tag pointing to this as I don't believe showing the user a page with shed loads of products on it is actually a good user experience so we havent done anything with this page. I have a sample url from one of our categories which may help - http://goo.gl/9LPDOZ This is obviously causing me duplication issues as well . Also , the main category pages has historically been the pages which ranks better as opposed to Page 2, Page 3 etc etc. I am wondering what I should do about the View All Page and has anyone else had this same issue and how did they deal with it. Do we just get rid of the View All even though Google says it prefers you to have it ? I also want to concentrate my link juice on the main category pages as opposed being diluted between all my paginated pages ? - Does anyone have any tips on how to best do this and have you seen any ranking improvement from this ? Any ideas greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
A/B Testing - Should I add product descriptions on my category landing pages as well as on product pages and if so . how to do this to avoid duplicate content
Hi All, I recently relaunched a new design on my tool hire eCommerce website and now display my products in grid form on my category landing pages as opposed to just a list view which we previously had on the old design. My bounce rates are alot higher than they use to be and my gut instinct is telling me maybe this is wrong . I want to do some a/b testing using a list view. My question is , previously in our list views we just showed the images and pricing and had on page content on the bottom of the page. The user would click on the product image and they would then we taken to the product page which has the product description , t&c, etc etc.. If I was to do this in my a/b testing but change it so we also displayed the product descriptions as well on the category landing pages . Is there a special way to do this as in effect, we would have duplicate content as the product descriptions are also on the product page?. Does anyone have any thoughts on this as to whether its a No No from an SEO point of view ?... Heres a short url link to one of my category pages - http://goo.gl/QJv5gw Historically we use to rank well for the category landing pages and not for the product pages.Our Rankings are down , bounce rates are higher so I am trying to sort both. We have good content on pages etc. Any advice greatly appreciated as always thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Urls in Bilingual websites
1-I have a bilingual website. Suppose that I am targeting a page for keyword "book" and I have included it in that page url for the English version: English version: www.abc.com/book Can I use the translation of "book" in the second language of the website url instead of "book" ? Please let me know which of the following urls are right " French Verison: www.abc.com/fr/book or www.abc.com/fr/livre livre=Book in French 2- Does Google have any tool to check if the second language page of the website has exactly the same content as the English version. What I want to do is for example for a certain page in English version, my targeted keyword is "book" . So my content would be around books. But in the French version of this page, I want to focus on keyword "Pencil" in French instead of "book". Is it wrong or any consequences? That was the main reason for the question number one. Because if it is ok to do what I explained in item 2 then I will set my urls like: In English : www.abc.com/book In French: www.abc.com/fr/crayon crayon=Pencil in French
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Ecommerce URL's
I'm a bit divided about the URL structure for ecommerce sites. I'm using Magento and I have Canonical URLs plugin installed. My question is about the URL structure and length. 1st Way: If I set up Product to have categories in the URL it will appear like this mysite.com/category/subcategory/product/ - and while the product can be in multiple places , the Canonical URL can be either short or long. The advantage of having this URL is that it shows all the categories in the breadcrumbs ( and a whole lot more links over the site ) . The disadvantage is the URL Length 2nd Way: Setting up the product to have no category in the URL URL will be mysite.com/product/ Advantage: short URL. disadvantage - doesn't show the categories in the breadcrumbs if you link direct. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear1 -
Double Forward Slash in URL //
My client is using double forward slahes in URL like this "//" is this affecting SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yanaiguana1110