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Google Website Optimizer’s 30-Minute Cookie Restriction

By: Chris Goward
Date: September 4th, 2007

I’m a big fan of Google Website Optimizer and we’ve found that most of our clients, not surprisingly, are enjoying the free price (and when I say “most”, it doesn’t mean that some don’t like the free price, just that they want to do more advanced testing that’s more practical with higher priced alternatives).

One issue I have, though, is with the 30-minute, single session cookie restriction. This rule means that Google Website Optimizer will only count a conversion if it occurs within 30 minutes and within the same session of viewing the test page.

So, if you visited my test page and saw one of 48 variable combinations, for example, and then 30 minutes later returned to the site to complete the transaction, you have a 98% probability (48/49, including the control) of seeing a different page combination. The problem is that the last combination is the only one that gets credited for the conversion, which shouldn’t necessarily be so.

This seems to be artificially oriented toward immediate impulse actions and may skew results.

I’ve passed this feedback on to Tom Leung (Google Website Optimizer Product Manager), and hope that they’ll be able to incorporate a change in the next Optimizer version, which I’m eagerly awaiting, I should add!

Ideally, we should be able to easily set our own rules for the timespan and persistence of the cookie based on the clients’ particular business rules and product purchase cycle.

Edit: Google has now changed Google Website Optimizer to use a 2-year cookie after we successfully persuaded them to allow us to test it for them in a private feature beta.

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Posted in: google website optimizer

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2 Responses to “Google Website Optimizer’s 30-Minute Cookie Restriction”

  1. Gabbar Singh Says:
    October 16th, 2007 at 10:23 pm

    Hello,

    I agree with you guys !!

    The Product purchase cycle would vary for different businesses !!

    Hope Google comes up with a fix on that !!

    Cheers,
    Gabbar.

  2. WiderFunnel : Blog Archive : New Never-Ending Cookies! Says:
    November 7th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

    [...] is a great advancement for the tool’s accuracy and user experience, and something that we’ve been asking for. The update extends the cookie life to two years (previously 30 minutes) and across multiple [...]


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