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10 Best Google Optimize Alternatives for 2023

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10 Best Google Optimize Alternatives for 2023

Google Optimize, the freemium A/B testing and analytics Google tool, is being sunset.

Google Optimize and its larger enterprise version, Optimize 360, will no longer be available from September 30, 2023. And users suddenly find themselves in the market for a new testing and analytics tool.

To help you transition to an alternative tool, we looked for the 10 best Google Optimize alternatives and have an overview of each to help you make the best decision for your needs.

What Are Google Optimize & Optimize 360?

First launched on June 1, 2012, as Google Website Optimizer, Google Optimize, as it came to be known, is a web analytics and testing tool.

It allows webmasters to experiment with their web pages and test variants to see how they perform against specified objectives.

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It consists of two main elements:

  • The Editor – A Chrome plugin, this allows you to change visual HTML elements for testing, including buttons, calls to action (CTAs), and page structure. It applies a JavaScript customized to the rules of your experiment and works with a variety of devices.
  • The Reporting Suite – Using data from your linked Google Analytics account, it provides you with tangible data about these experiments.

Combined, these allow webmasters to utilize A/B testing of new content, designs, and layouts on a subset of visitors.

Metrics provide insight into what’s working, allowing website owners to make educated decisions about their pages.

Prior to the advent of tools like this, designers were forced to rely on instinct and feel to determine what works best.

The free version, Optimize, allows users to run up to 5 experiments simultaneously, while the paid version, Optimize 360, lets you run more than 100 at a time.

Why Is Google Optimize Being Sunset?

Users of Optimize have been critical of the platform’s features, particularly on the free version, which restricts the number of tests, goals, variables, and runtime for experiments.

The free version also lacks dedicated customer support and has been accused of inflating visitor count.

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Additionally, it requires the installation of an anti-flicker snippet that can impact loading time to ensure visitors don’t receive a momentary glimpse of the original page.

These problems, as well as a general lack of features and services required by customers for experimentation, led to Google’s decision to end Optimize and Optimize 360.

Instead, it has begun investing in third-party integrations for Google Analytics 4 that will provide better, more effective solutions for version testing and improving user experiences.

The 10 Best Google Optimize Alternatives

If you’re looking for something that offers the functionality of Google Optimize and Optimize 360, here are some alternatives you should consider:

1. Convert Experiences

A fast and flicker-free versioning tool, Convert Experiences offers advanced testing options, including A/B, split, multivariate, and multipage testing.

Screenshot from Convert Experiences, February 2023

 

Users can target a highly specific audience using more than 40 filters, and collision prevention stops visitors from being exposed to more than one experiment at a time.

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Partial Features List:

  • Over 90 integrations, including Google Analytics.
  • A/B testing.
  • Visual editor.
  • Code editor.
  • Traffic allocation.
  • Preview mode.
  • Device targeting.
  • Cross-domain testing.

Price: $99-$1,599/month.

2.  VWO Testing

Visual Website Optimizer, or VWO Testing, allows users to create and test user experiences without the need for deep technical knowledge.

VWO TestingScreenshot from VWO Testing, February 2023

 

Using templated widgets and a point-and-click visual editor (a code editor is also included), this testing tool is designed to make prototyping and testing quick and easy.

Partial Features List:

  • Extensive integrations, including Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
  • Bayesian-powered statistics.
  • Segmented results.
  • Parallel load time.
  • Visitor heatmaps and recordings.
  • Test results recording and archiving.
  • Kanban boards.
  • Full-funnel tracking.

Price: Free limited version, paid versions start at $356/month.

3. Kameleoon

Intended for enterprise-level organizations, Kameleoon offers full stack and feature experimentation in one optimization solution.

Kameleoon toolScreenshot from Kameleoon, February 2023

 

Providing more in-depth experimentation into both user experiences and server-side changes, it allows your web team to view all statistical data in one location.

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HIPAA-certified, it also includes extensive privacy features and a machine-learning model to help predict visitor intent and accurately segment your audience.

Partial Features List:

  • More than 30 integrations, including Adobe and Google.
  • Data privacy, security, and consent management tools.
  • Visual and code editors.
  • Dynamic traffic allocation
  • 45+ native audience segmentation criteria.
  • KPI tracking.

Price: Quote based.

4. Zoho PageSense

Designed to help you understand what’s working on your website, as well as how your visitors are interacting with your site, Zoho PageSense has a range of tools for tracking, analysis, optimization, and personalization.

Zoho PageSenseScreenshot from Zoho PageSense, February 2023

 

In addition to content optimization, it allows you to analyze the effectiveness of pop-ups, forms, and dropdowns.

Unlike other options, it does not provide an advanced code editor, and tests are limited to 10 projects with 50 total goals.

Partial Features List:

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  • Numerous, including Google Ads and Analytics.
  • Funnel analysis tools.
  • Visual heatmaps.
  • A/B and split URL testing.
  • Polling functionality.
  • Personalization options.

Price: $12-780/month, depending on functionality and monthly visitors.

5. AB Tasty

Another platform designed to integrate marketing and growth with back-end developments and products, AB Tasty provides a range of tools for experimentation.

AB_TastyScreenshot from AB Tasty, February 2023

 

The marketing functionality, which is what most people looking for a Google Optimize replacement will be interested in, is a user-friendly, low-code way to experiment with various changes and optimize a website.

Partial Features List:

  • Third-party integrations.
  • A/B and multivariate testing.
  • Traffic allocation
  • AI-personalization.
  • Data-driven segmentation.
  • Granular campaign triggers.

Price: Quote based.

6. Omniconvert Explore

Designed specifically for retailers and ecommerce sites, Omniconvert Explore offers a variety of personalization and segmentation tools to help you optimize your site for more sales.

Omniconvert ExploreScreenshot from Omniconvert Explore, February 2023

 

It’s used by more than 10,000 companies and includes more than 100 overlay templates, as well as a helpful experiment debugger.

Partial Features List:

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  • A/B testing.
  • Web personalization.
  • Survey tools.
  • CDN cache bypass.
  • CSS and JavaScript editor.
  • API access.
  • Bayesian & Frequentist statistics.

Price: $390-12,430+/month. Custom pricing is available.

7. Optimizely

Providing three products running the gamut of testing from planning to monetization, Optimizely is intended to optimize every customer touchpoint.

OptimizelyScreenshot from Optimizely, February 2023

 

Optimizely Experiment provides the same functionality as Google Optimize – and then some – allowing you to take a scientific approach to visitor experiences across channels and devices, with data that refreshes every 90 seconds.

Partial Features List:

  • Low and no-code experiment options.
  • Content management functionality.
  • Headless API.
  • Real-time segmentation and validated assumptions at scale.
  • Experiment lifecycle management.
  • Feature flagging and rollouts.
  • Collaboration tools.

Price: Quote based.

8. Adobe Target

The creator of Acrobat and InDesign also offers an audience-targeting experimentation tool in the form of Adobe Target.

Using machine learning algorithms, it provides AI-powered user experience testing while offering personalization and automation at scale.

Adobe TargetScreenshot from Adobe Target, February 2023

 

Generally used by enterprise-level organizations, it seamlessly interfaces with Adobe’s analytics tools – but is only available as part of the company’s Marketing Cloud.

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Partial Features List:

  • Intuitive interface.
  • A/B and multivariate testing.
  • Automated omnichannel personalization.
  • AI-assisted experience targeting.
  • Simultaneous execution of multiple tests.

Price: Quote based.

9. SiteSpect

SiteSpect is an A/B testing and experimentation tool that bills itself as the pioneer in the field.

Geared toward enterprise-level organizations with high site traffic, it has tools for marketers, product managers, developers, and network operations.

SiteSpectScreenshot from SiteSpect, February 2023

 

All of these tools serve to improve conversion rates and raise revenue.

Partial Features List:

  • Third-party integrations.
  • A/B and multivariate testing.
  • AI-powered behavioral and contextual targeting.
  • Omnichannel and device targeting.
  • High-volume personalization tools.
  • Visual editor.
  • Flicker-free.
  • SEO-friendly.

Price: Quote based.

10. DynamicYield Experience OS

Another tool geared toward high-volume sites, DynamicYield Experience OS allows you to algorithmically match content, offers, and products to individual visitors to your website.

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DynamicYieldScreenshot from DynamicYield Experience OS, February 2023

 

Working across teams, it is designed to allow you to offer a wide array of seamless experiences and adjust your personalization program to your specific field and KPIs.

Partial Features List:

  • Agnostic platform designed to be future-proof.
  • A/B testing.
  • Extensive personalization across channels and touchpoints.
  • Customizable to your needs.
  • Predictive test improvement via machine learning.
  • Client- and server-side tools.
  • Extensive support and resources.

Price: Quote based.

It’s Time To Move On From Google Optimize

Google Optimize was a useful tool, but with its sunset date in sight already, you can’t wait until the last minute to decide on its replacement.

And while dozens of options are available for A/B testing, not all of them will suit your unique needs.

Before you decide, take careful stock of how you’re currently using Google Optimize or Optimize 360. Look at the features you’re using the most, as well as what increased functionality you would enjoy.

Then carefully evaluate your options to find the best testing tools for you.

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Luckily, most platforms listed here offer some form of trial basis or demo, so you can get a first-hand look at what they’re offering and how they work before pulling the trigger on a long-term deal.

Don’t be afraid to explore your options, including platforms that are not listed here.

No one knows your requirements better than you, but by carefully doing your homework and evaluating your needs, you can find the best tool for increasing visitor satisfaction and boosting your results.

More resources: 


Featured Image: VectorMine/Shutterstock



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How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages

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Compression can be used by search engines to detect low-quality pages. Although not widely known, it's useful foundational knowledge for SEO.

The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.

Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.

What Is Compressibility?

In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.

TL/DR Of Compression

Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.

This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:

  • Identify Patterns:
    A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases
  • Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
    The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size.
  • Shorter References Use Less Bits:
    The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.

A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.

Research Paper About Detecting Spam

This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.

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Marc Najork

One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.

Dennis Fetterly

Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.

Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.

Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis

Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.

Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.

Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:

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“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”

The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.

They write:

“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.

…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”

High Compressibility Correlates To Spam

The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.

Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.

The researchers concluded:

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“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”

But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:

“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.

Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:

95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.

More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”

The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.

Insight Into Quality Rankings

The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.

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The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.

The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.

This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:

“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.

For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”

So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.

Combining Multiple Signals

The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.

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The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:

“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”

These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:

“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”

Key Insight:

Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.

What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.

Takeaways

We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.

Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:

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  • Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
  • Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
  • Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
  • In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
  • When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
  • Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
  • Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.

Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:

Detecting spam web pages through content analysis

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New Google Trends SEO Documentation

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Google publishes new documentation for how to use Google Trends for search marketing

Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.

The new guide has six sections:

  1. About Google Trends
  2. Tutorial on monitoring trends
  3. How to do keyword research with the tool
  4. How to prioritize content with Trends data
  5. How to use Google Trends for competitor research
  6. How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment

The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.

Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.

To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.

The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.

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Google explains:

“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”

Read the new Google Trends documentation:

Get started with Google Trends

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero

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All the best things about Ahrefs Evolve 2024

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All the best things about Ahrefs Evolve 2024

Hey all, I’m Rebekah and I am your Chosen One to “do a blog post for Ahrefs Evolve 2024”.

What does that entail exactly? I don’t know. In fact, Sam Oh asked me yesterday what the title of this post would be. “Is it like…Ahrefs Evolve 2024: Recap of day 1 and day 2…?” 

Even as I nodded, I couldn’t get over how absolutely boring that sounded. So I’m going to do THIS instead: a curation of all the best things YOU loved about Ahrefs’ first conference, lifted directly from X.

Let’s go!

OUR HUGE SCREEN

CONFERENCE VENUE ITSELF

It was recently named the best new skyscraper in the world, by the way.

 

OUR AMAZING SPEAKER LINEUP – SUPER INFORMATIVE, USEFUL TALKS!

 

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GREAT MUSIC

 

AMAZING GOODIES

 

SELFIE BATTLE

Some background: Tim and Sam have a challenge going on to see who can take the most number of selfies with all of you. Last I heard, Sam was winning – but there is room for a comeback yet!

 

THAT BELL

Everybody’s just waiting for this one.

 

STICKER WALL

AND, OF COURSE…ALL OF YOU!

 

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There’s a TON more content on LinkedIn – click here – but I have limited time to get this post up and can’t quite figure out how to embed LinkedIn posts so…let’s stop here for now. I’ll keep updating as we go along!



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