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> Seriously... there is /nothing wrong/ with a site choosing to A/B test people by returning different results from the server, and yet Google insists that doin

by adgar 14y ago

> Seriously... there is /nothing wrong/ with a site choosing to A/B test people by returning different results from the server, and yet Google insists that doing so is somehow harmful and that it would be better to wait entire extra round-trips to do client-side testing using JavaScript, a process that in the end is not only a worse experience for the user and a more complex and less secure mechanism for the developer but has /the exact same fundamental behavior that Google claims is evil/. Halfway through your rant, you clearly demonstrate that you did not bother to adequately understand the linked article before ranting about Google, throwing words around like "evil" and "despicable" without even knowing what you are ranting about, like so very many well-intentioned but woefully ignorant commenters in today's technorati. FTA, emphasis mine: > [The split-page approach used] is sort of a hybrid of Client-side and Server-side variations. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you want to test your landing page at yourdomain.com/landinag-page. You would create additional pages and using javascript, the visitor would be redirected to one of the pages. You seem to have completely misunderstood what the author was saying. Naturally, since you are both misinformed and critical of Google, that makes you the most highly upvoted comment on today's Google Hacker News thread!

saurik 14y ago
Can you please explain to me how this oversight on my behalf makes the situation better? Does the fact that Google is also disallowing client-side A/B testing of this fashion cause it all to make sense? Seriously: you can tell me I misunderstood the article (which I will happily admit I skimmed: I read the various paragraphs as "different common mechanisms for implementing split tests", one per paragraph), but can you honestly tell me that this misunderstanding would have changed anything about my rant, excepting possibly making Google come off even worse? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xepQgGcit2A#t=3m23 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xepQgGcit2A#t=3m23 ^ This is the reason why I went in that direction, by the way. This is a video from Matt Cutts, one of the many that I sat through watching during a massive five-hour- MattCutts-and-GoogleWebmasterHelp -a-thon that I force myself through a week or two ago. I am hotlinking to 3:23 into the video as this video answers multiple questions (as is common on the MattCutts channel, as opposed to on GoogleWebmasterHelp, where each question tends to get its own video). In this question's answer, it is clearly stated that Google may very well consider the same page returning different loads of the page for purposes of A/B testing as "cloaking", and that webmasters should instead use client-side mechanisms to perform these tests. If tests /are/ done, it is claimed that the webmaster should only do so on areas of the site that are not being indexed (which may involve explicitly telling Google to stop indexing that part of your site).
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Your rant doesn't make sense because your starting point "Google is evil and despicable for making rules for the Internet" is incoherent. Both Google's action and Google's inaction "make rules for the Internet". In an alternate universe where Google didn't implement this penalty, attacks using this kind of client-side redirection could easily be common and a serious problem. In that universe, alternate-saurik could come to Hacker News and complain that "Google is evil and despicable for not clamping down on these client-side hacks that are almost always used by attackers, not legitimate developers." Google has to make choices. Those choices are going to feel like "rules for the Internet" for many people they influence. That's unavoidable. If you're going to criticize Google for this sort of issue, you need to focus on the details of those choices. In this case, your lack of attention to detail makes it clear you're not making a credible case.
  - saurik 14y ago
    In my rant I provided a specific example of how Google's rules regarding content cloaking make it difficult to search or build sites like Hacker News (and will now further point out that Yahoo provides that feature); I have also provided evidence that Google disrecommends doing A/B testing using some mechanisms as it may be considered cloaking, and that webmasters should first deindex their content from Google. I can even, if you demand, find other videos from Google (also from Matt Cutts) that show that the heavily-hedged suggestion in this video to serve different content from the server (even small snippets of text, such as titles or breadcrumbs) that is not based on IP address (and thereby might not be stable for GoogleBot) is also highly dangerous and can lead to Google believing that you are cloaking. I therefore take issue with the fact that, once I misunderstood this specific article, that somehow means that all of the other research that I've done on this matter, and even the arguments that I state in my rant (where the specific paragraph that is currently under contention I am backing up with evidence outside of this single article, which is from someone none of us have ever heard of and for all we know could be lying about what Google did anyway) are now void.
  - saurik 14y ago
    (Also, if you spent any time at all to look into who I am, what I do, or the things that I stand for, you'd realize that your appeal to alternate-saurik in a world where Google built an open system that was capable of being abused doesn't really have much basis, and is honestly a little insulting.)

by adgar 14y ago

saurik 14y ago

Can you please explain to me how this oversight on my behalf makes the situation better? Does the fact that Google is also disallowing client-side A/B testing of this fashion cause it all to make sense? Seriously: you can tell me I misunderstood the article (which I will happily admit I skimmed: I read the various paragraphs as "different common mechanisms for implementing split tests", one per paragraph), but can you honestly tell me that this misunderstanding would have changed anything about my rant, excepting possibly making Google come off even worse? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xepQgGcit2A#t=3m23 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xepQgGcit2A#t=3m23 ^ This is the reason why I went in that direction, by the way. This is a video from Matt Cutts, one of the many that I sat through watching during a massive five-hour- MattCutts-and-GoogleWebmasterHelp -a-thon that I force myself through a week or two ago. I am hotlinking to 3:23 into the video as this video answers multiple questions (as is common on the MattCutts channel, as opposed to on GoogleWebmasterHelp, where each question tends to get its own video). In this question's answer, it is clearly stated that Google may very well consider the same page returning different loads of the page for purposes of A/B testing as "cloaking", and that webmasters should instead use client-side mechanisms to perform these tests. If tests /are/ done, it is claimed that the webmaster should only do so on areas of the site that are not being indexed (which may involve explicitly telling Google to stop indexing that part of your site).

fpgeek 14y ago
Your rant doesn't make sense because your starting point "Google is evil and despicable for making rules for the Internet" is incoherent. Both Google's action and Google's inaction "make rules for the Internet". In an alternate universe where Google didn't implement this penalty, attacks using this kind of client-side redirection could easily be common and a serious problem. In that universe, alternate-saurik could come to Hacker News and complain that "Google is evil and despicable for not clamping down on these client-side hacks that are almost always used by attackers, not legitimate developers." Google has to make choices. Those choices are going to feel like "rules for the Internet" for many people they influence. That's unavoidable. If you're going to criticize Google for this sort of issue, you need to focus on the details of those choices. In this case, your lack of attention to detail makes it clear you're not making a credible case.
- saurik 14y ago
  In my rant I provided a specific example of how Google's rules regarding content cloaking make it difficult to search or build sites like Hacker News (and will now further point out that Yahoo provides that feature); I have also provided evidence that Google disrecommends doing A/B testing using some mechanisms as it may be considered cloaking, and that webmasters should first deindex their content from Google. I can even, if you demand, find other videos from Google (also from Matt Cutts) that show that the heavily-hedged suggestion in this video to serve different content from the server (even small snippets of text, such as titles or breadcrumbs) that is not based on IP address (and thereby might not be stable for GoogleBot) is also highly dangerous and can lead to Google believing that you are cloaking. I therefore take issue with the fact that, once I misunderstood this specific article, that somehow means that all of the other research that I've done on this matter, and even the arguments that I state in my rant (where the specific paragraph that is currently under contention I am backing up with evidence outside of this single article, which is from someone none of us have ever heard of and for all we know could be lying about what Google did anyway) are now void.
- saurik 14y ago
  (Also, if you spent any time at all to look into who I am, what I do, or the things that I stand for, you'd realize that your appeal to alternate-saurik in a world where Google built an open system that was capable of being abused doesn't really have much basis, and is honestly a little insulting.)