Just like with Google's consolidation of preventing spam on your site, Google did the same with its blog post on how to minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search. Google has repurposed that old blog post into an official help document in the Google Search developer docs.
Last week, it appears Google added a new help document named Minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search. If you look closely, it is pretty much the same advice and structure of the blog post from a decade a ago named Website testing and Google search. I spotted this via Rich Tatum on Twitter.
Google has been working more on its Google Search Central documentation and they also added a new top level hierarchy named "SEO fundamentals" to keep things more organized.
In any event, this A/B Testing SEO Impact document is broken down as follows:
- A/B Testing Overview
- Multivariant Testing Overview
- Best Practices When Testing
- Don't Cloak
- Use rel canonical links
- Use 302 redirects, not 301 redirects
- Run the experiment only as long as necessary and not longer
- and more links
So if you do a lot of testing on your site and it has been some time since you read Google's doc on this, here is an updated version.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
