Redirect to a split test. 302 best?

Will a 302 .htaccess redirect avoid drop in rank during split testing?

[JayCee]

Got no reponses over in "SEM" topic, so i'm trying again here:

I'm thinking of using a PHP+MySQL split testing product. It uses a "gateway" URL to access split tests.

My understanding is that this is a redirect which sends search engine robots (and other visitors) to your split test pages, rather than your current page.

I've read elsewhere on WebmasterWorld that SE robots (e.g. Googlebot) treat redirect URLs as new sites (since they have never visited before), which means you loose PageRank and your ranking in the organic (free) SERPs (Search Engine Return Pages) drops.

Further, my research so far indicates that using a 302 (temporary) redirect, rather than a 301 (permanent) redirect, tells the robot that your page will soon be back at the previous URL and to apply its findings to that original URL, not the new one, eliminating the problem.

Although 302 redirects are getting a bad name from hijacked sites and pages and SEO blackhat use, it is said that they are OK if used under one domain - not redirecting from one domain to another.

If your site is new and you get your traffic from PPC campaigns, all this may not matter, since your site will have a low organic SERP ranking at first anyway. And PageRank itself doesn't seem to be critical these days.

Can anyone verify the above or provide more insight?

Thanks all!

[moose606]

When I split test, I put all my test pages and scripts in subdirectories. Then I change my robots.txt as follows:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /this is dir where php scripts and redirects are/
Disallow: /this is dir where test pages are/

This way, the search engines will not follow links into your test pages, avoiding any problems with duplicate content.

[jdMorgan]

If you have your A/B test files in two separate subdirectories on the same server, you don't need any kind of redirect. You could use mod_rewrite to internally rewrite --not externally redirect-- requests to the two versions based on the current second or minute, or any other server variable.

Alternately, your could use a reverse proxy to proxy the requests to two back-end servers (which could be running on the same physical machine) based on the same kind of variables. See mod_rewrite RewriteRule [P] flag.

In either case, there is no need for any redirect, so none the wiser.

Jim

[JayCee]

Thank you both!
This is good news indeed :)

[moose606]

So now google will have intimate knowledge of your web site, your conversion testing campaigns, along with your conversion rates for each campaign element, and they will do what with it? That info is gold(in the right hands).
In a lot of competitive markets Google Adwords is in reality a silent partner, siphoning off most of the profit in the transaction. Are you sure you should give Google more info? Call me paranoid.

[JayCee]

Hmmmm.... food for thought, Moose606.

Having your own stand-alone split testing software on your own computer is certainly more secure - and Google is not the only web-based (no local stand-alone product) split testing service, for that matter.