The conversion page – Google Website Optimizer v 1.0 The Techie Guide User Manual
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The Techie Guide to Google Website Optimizer
How Experiments Work
6. The visit tracking code runs, which tracks a visit and the page version. This is basically a standard
Google Analytics (GA) tracking call, using a custom “virtual URL” representing a visit to the test page.
7. The virtual URL looks like this:
/<experiment key>/test
where the experiment key is the same
as the k variable in the Control Script like
var k=’1234567890’
.
The Conversion Page
When your visitor reaches the conversion page:
1. The Conversion Script runs, which tracks a conversion and the combo version (for MVT) or page
version (for A/B).
2. Like the Tracking Script, this is basically a standard Google Analytics (GA) tracking call, using a
custom “virtual URL” representing a visit to the test page.
The virtual URL looks like this:
/<experiment key>/goal
where the experiment key is the same
as the k variable in the Control Script such as
var k=’2045836535’
.
3. When the GA call is made, the value for the __utmx cookie is passed to Google’s servers. If the user
has an __utmx cookie (which matches the experiment ID), GWO uses the value from the cookie to
know which combination or page to attribute the conversion to.
For more details on our Tracking Scripts, please see the GA technical documentation at:
.
Points to remember
• The parameters for A/B experiments are the same as for multivariate experiments, with this
exception: The value of “utmx” applies to each single experiment page, rather than to several
sections of each page.
• If the visitor was chosen to get the original version of the test page, GWO will do nothing (not
redirect).
Know your cookies
GWO uses cookies (and only cookies) to identify unique visitors. Each unique visitor will be counted only
as a single visitor -- and if they convert, only as a single conversion -- regardless of how many times they
visit the test page or conversion page. The cookie lifetime is two years.