Will multivariate (A/B) testing applied with 302 redirects to a subdomain affect my Google ranking?

Posted by Lior on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by Lior
Published on 2011-08-30T08:06:22Z Indexed on 2012/03/29 11:43 UTC
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google

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a-b-testing

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google-website-optimizer

I want to do an A B test of an entire site for a new design and UX with only slight changes in content (a big brand site that has good Google rankings for many generic keywords.

My idea of implementation is doing a 302 redirect to the new version (placing it on www1 subdomain) and allowing only user agents of known browsers to pass. The test version will have disallow all in the robots text.

Will Google treat this favorably or do I have to use Google Website Optimizer (which will give me tracking headaches)?

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