Ask Google to choose your next domain
rvmenu.com
Ask Google to choose your next domain
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#2The ads started on January 2 and took 6 days to hit 98% statistical confidence.
No! You have to pick the time first, wait that amount of time, and later analyze how much confidence you achieved. With random variations, you could have a run of any size of positive or negative results, and you could just wait until you get the result you want. Sorry but tons of people make this mistake with A/B tests.
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#3The ads started on January 2 and took 6 days to hit 98% statistical confidence. No! You have to pick the time first, wait that amount of time, and later analyze how much confidence you achieved. With random variations, you could have a run of any size of positive or negative results, and you could just wait until you get the result you want. Sorry but tons of people make this mistake with A/B tests.
Interesting. As a thought experiment, what if I had run a sample size estimator beforehand and concluded that I needed 4,000 data points and estimated it would take 6 days.
In this alternate reality, I began the experiment on January 2 and ended it on January 8. Would that render the invalid experiment valid?
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#4The ads started on January 2 and took 6 days to hit 98% statistical confidence. No! You have to pick the time first, wait that amount of time, and later analyze how much confidence you achieved. With random variations, you could have a run of any size of positive or negative results, and you could just wait until you get the result you want. Sorry but tons of people make this mistake with A/B tests.
Interesting. As a thought experiment, what if I had run a sample size estimator beforehand and concluded that I needed 4,000 data points and estimated it would take 6 days. In this alternate reality, I began the experiment on January 2 and ended it on January 8. Would that render the invalid experiment valid?
Yeah, actually. The difference is that you're supposed to take a random sample, not a sample that looks nice :)
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#5The ads started on January 2 and took 6 days to hit 98% statistical confidence. No! You have to pick the time first, wait that amount of time, and later analyze how much confidence you achieved. With random variations, you could have a run of any size of positive or negative results, and you could just wait until you get the result you want. Sorry but tons of people make this mistake with A/B tests.
Weird... I always thought that if you are running a split test in parallel (all at the same time), then you can figure out the number of samples needed to compare the branches with statistical confidence. I mean it makes sense to me. As the number of samples increases for each split test the distribution shifts from a binomial distribution to a gaussian distribution by the central limit theorem, and that happens around 1000 samples with a reasonable conversion rate. Then you're just comparing Gaussians, centered around the mean conversion value, with a width proportional to the number of samples. Taking the difference between two gaussians will give you the "chance to be different". Standard practice is to wait until one branch has a 95% chance to be better and then declare it the winner. This will test for false positives, which is usually what you are concerned about. False negatives don't matter that much when it comes to things like picking a name.
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#6'RV Menu' is a RV recipe/food keyword, not a rental-related keyword.
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#7'RV Menu' is a RV recipe/food keyword, not a rental-related keyword.
My office mate said the same thing. :)
The numbers were crystal clear though: bounce rate was the same for all the domains indicating that users were getting what they expected after clicking through.
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#8The ads started on January 2 and took 6 days to hit 98% statistical confidence. No! You have to pick the time first, wait that amount of time, and later analyze how much confidence you achieved. With random variations, you could have a run of any size of positive or negative results, and you could just wait until you get the result you want. Sorry but tons of people make this mistake with A/B tests.
Weird... I always thought that if you are running a split test in parallel (all at the same time), then you can figure out the number of samples needed to compare the branches with statistical confidence. I mean it makes sense to me. As the number of samples increases for each split test the distribution shifts from a binomial distribution to a gaussian distribution by the central limit theorem, and that happens arou…
Here's a good explanation: http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab-test.html
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#9I spent a lot of money on Google in the RV industry (to the tune of $500,000/month for a certain fortune 500 company) & there are a lot of issues with this post:
First up, his stats across the board aren't even close. His impressions vary by a factor of 4 for the different ads. From that alone, I bet he forgot to turn of the "optimize my ads" setting from Google and switch on "rotate evenly".
The "optimize my ads" feature sounds like a good thing to leave checked, but like most things is designed to make Google more money. That setting basically allows Google to start optimizing whichever ad gets out in front first - which doesn't let you figure out which one is actually superior. So the data is tainted from the start.
Also,
> The .co domains have a performance penalty versus their .com brethren but the differences should be proportional.
Where do you get this from? In PPC I haven't seen any studies on this at all. I could understand .com leakage on .co domains for people typing it in directly out of habit, but Google doesn't penalize ads based on their TLD.
Not to take away from the strategy (it's a great idea & this is exactly how Tim Ferriss picked the name for his Four Hour Work Week back in 2007[1]), but there's a lot of flaws with this specific example.
[1] http://boingboing.net/2010/10/25/howto-use-google-adw.html
Re: Ask Google to choose your next domain
#10'RV Menu' is a RV recipe/food keyword, not a rental-related keyword.
My office mate said the same thing. :) The numbers were crystal clear though: bounce rate was the same for all the domains indicating that users were getting what they expected after clicking through.
Depending on your keywords you targeted in the initial campaign, you may run into some issues scaling out your campaigns into phrase + BMM match keywords as "rv recipes" & rv menu creation seem to be something people are looking for quite a bit.
Also, conversion rate is a better overall metric than bounce rate (harder to test that from the start though).