I’m trying to setup some A/B testing for work using Google’s website optimizer (a free part of AdWords).

Since the pages that I want to A/B test are behind a login I get stuck at the page “A/B Experiment Set-up: Install and Validate JavaScript Tags”. The Website optimizer application requires you to validate each of your testing pages through its interface. However, Website optimizer cannot validate private pages or anything behind a login. The Google instructions say that you can choose to “opt out of validation” but I could not find the instructions or the options to avoid the validation process.

A quick search shows that I can circumvent Website Optimizer’s validation process simply by putting out publicly accessible dummy pages that contain the javascript codes that the Website Optimizer wants me to have on my actual pages.

http://www.prusak.com/archives/2007-10-09/google-optimizer-ab-test-with-...

follow up 3/4/2007

This method doesn’t work for me because we have a web application deployment process that won’t let me fake out the URL. Looks like I may have to use the Website Optimizer multivariate testing method to tweak my pages.