Google Website Optimizer Multivariate test not saving __utmx cookie?

Question

Hi there, I'm trying to run a multivariate test across 3 pages, google says this should be ok, as long as you use the same section names, it doesn't care about the url so much.

so I have checked in google optimizer, it says all my scripts are set up correctly.

Also the strange thing is it DOES work, it replaces the content, but it never ever saves a cookie, so when you get to the next page, or even just refresh the same page, you might get a different variant.. Which obviously shouldn't happen.

I'm pulling my hair our here, any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem. I've run several tests with GWO and never had this issue. However, with my latest MVT, at first I wasn't seeing GWO even set the cookie. Then, it started setting the cookie but was not able to read the cookie.

Although I am running a sitewide, MVT, I am not running it across multiple domains. However, in order to get GWO to set and read the cookie correctly, I found that I needed to use some of the code required for sitewide tests that span multiple domains. Here is the google article on cross domain tracking:

http://www.google.com/support/websiteoptimizer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=151978

According to the Google WSO API, by default, GWO is setting this property:

gwoTracker._setDomainName("auto");

For whatever reason, it was my experience that this was not happening and by making this call explicitly in my code, it fixed the problem! This call needs to be added to both your Tracking Script and your Conversion Script.

Again, I've never experienced this with any of my other GWO tests, so it was kind of weird to have it happen out of the blue but explicitly making this call fixed this problem for me. Good luck.