Managing Tests

The Tests view is a two-pane workspace. The left rail lists every URL the client has tests (or tracked pages) on; the right pane shows the selected page's performance chart and its experiments. This page covers getting around the workspace, adding pages to it, and moving tests through their lifecycle.

The URL rail

The left rail shows one row per page, with its path, colored status dots for running, draft, and completed test counts, and the page's best CTR change so far.

• Click a row to view that page in the right pane.
• Tick the checkbox on two, three, or four rows to compare pages side by side (see below).
• Status tabs (All, Running, Drafts, Done) filter which pages and tests show. The All tab includes tracked pages that have no tests yet.
• Filter URLs... searches by URL.
• The filter icon opens a panel with sorting (Recent activity, Performance (Best CTR Δ), Clicks gained, Most tests, Status, A → Z) and filters for tests with results, variable type, and activity date.
• The + button adds a single page. See "Add a single page" below.

The page detail pane

Selecting one URL shows:

• A header with the full URL and action buttons: Open in GSC (opens the page's report in Google Search Console), Bulk import, Open page, and Add experiment. Open page opens the page's cross-feature object, with its links, issues, and recommendations, and appears when the page is registered in Pages.
• A KPI row: Best CTR Δ, Clicks Gained, Impressions, and Win Rate across the page's completed tests.
• A daily clicks chart scoped to one test's window, with dashed markers where the test started and ended. If the page has several tests, a dropdown above the chart switches between them.
• The Experiments list. Each card shows the test's status and variable. Once results exist, the card also shows CTR change, rank change, clicks before and after, and, when GA4 is connected, a Key Ev. Δ context figure. Cards have a Restore button (see Reading Results) and an Edit or View button that opens the experiment editor.

Compare up to four URLs

Tick the checkboxes on two, three, or four rows in the rail to replace the detail pane with a side-by-side comparison of those pages. Each selected page gets a color that carries through to the comparison chart. Click Clear next to the comparison count, or click any row body, to return to single-page view.

Add a single page

Click the + button next to the rail search to add one URL. RankNest crawls the page, lets you set its page type and topic cluster, and registers it in three places at once: the SEO Testing rail (shown as "No tests" until you add one), the Pages inventory, and the client's link map. The page is one shared object across all three features.

Bulk import pages

Use Bulk import (in the page detail header) to create draft tests for many pages at once:

1. Click Bulk import. The Crawl & Import Pages dialog opens with the client's domain pre-filled.
2. Click Start Crawl. RankNest discovers the site's pages; larger sites take a few minutes.
3. Select the pages you want. Select All picks everything up to your plan's remaining test slots (see Pricing). Pages that already have an active test are marked with an Active Test badge and can't be re-imported.
4. Click Import N Pages. RankNest creates a draft test for each selected page and then syncs Search Console data for the batch, with a progress bar.

Each imported test is a draft with the page's current metadata captured as the control. Open each one to choose its variable, write the variant, and start it. See Creating Tests.

Test lifecycle

Points worth knowing:

• Starting locks the baseline. Once a test leaves draft, the Sync & Save Data from Site and Sync GSC actions are disabled so the "before" snapshot can't be overwritten.
• Running tests are view-only. The editor opens as View Experiment with no save path; the one action is End Experiment, which asks for confirmation, marks the test completed, and pulls the variant-period metrics from Search Console.
• Tests end themselves. A running test past its end date is automatically completed and its results synced (checked nightly). Leave the End Date blank when creating a test and it ends 30 days after starting.
• Completed is final. A completed test can't return to running. Create a new test on the same page instead. Pages can hold any number of tests over time.

Tips

• The Tests / Results toggle in the top bar switches between this workspace and the roll-up dashboard. See Reading Results.
• Sort the rail by Performance (Best CTR Δ) to find pages whose past tests worked, or Most tests to see where you've been experimenting hardest.
• Coming from the Pages inventory? Its test actions deep-link straight into this view with the page pre-selected.

Troubleshooting

A page shows "No tests" in the rail. It was added as a tracked page (via the + button or another feature) but has no experiments yet. Click it and use Add experiment.

A URL is missing from the rail on the Running tab. The status tabs hide pages with no tests matching the tab. Switch to All, or search for the URL. A search match always shows the page.

The clicks chart says "Connect GSC for daily data". The daily series needs a connected Search Console property. Completed tests still show their before/after totals.

Related

• Creating Tests
• Reading Results
• Page Inventory
• Google Search Console