Google has announced that they will be ending their Optimize tool in September this year. This has been available for more than 10 years as a split testing tool, which could be integrated with Google Analytics, and enabled marketers to test changes to their web pages. With the ending of Universal Analytics and the new range of tools coming with Google Analytics 4, Optimize has now run its course.
First introduced in June 2011, Google Optimize was a free tool that allowed users to conduct A/B tests, personalisation and multivariate tests on their websites to improve user experience and conversions. Although not considered to be the best tool on the market, the integration with Google Analytics did mean that many digital marketers and website owners used it to optimise their pages and improve their online performance.
However, with the changes happening with the Analytics platform, Google has decided to focus on integrating website optimisation and experimentation capabilities into the GA4 platform through different methods. It believes that this will provide a more seamless and efficient experience for users, as they will no longer have to switch between multiple tools to access different features when they create marketing strategies.
Google remains committed to investing in third-party A/B testing integrations as it understands the value of these tools to enable marketers in businesses of all sizes to easily test and improve their user experiences.
Optimize will remain available until September 2023. Ahead of that, Google is collaborating on new GA4 integrations with other A/B testing providers (such as AB Tasty, Optimizely and VWO), and therefore we expect further announcements to be made in the coming months about new ways to run split testing as part of the GA4 platform.
An important difference between using a Universal Analytics property and a Google Analytics 4 property is the ability to report on individual sessions compared to the ability to report on individual users and their experiences across many sessions. You can see the relation between the Universal Analytics Optimize and the corresponding functionality for Analytics 4 here.
If you want to know more about how using Optimize with Google Analytics 4 can help your business, or you want help with GA4 integration, please get in touch.