My general sense of the revised partnership doesn't really surprise me. On an open webinar a while ago a Yahoo! rep seemed particularly passionate about the Gemini platform and its room for growth while (IIRC) rather vague in response to questions surrounding Bing ads vs. Gemini. Gemini's early integration with tools like Marin Software also indicate a strong interest in driving use of this product.
If you have Google Analytics installed, I'd recommend looking into the medium/source.
If nothing stands out there, then you'll have to dig a little deeper. To check for some bot/spam traffic, take a look into device, OS, geo, browser, and browser version to see if you can find a spike in a certain combination of those. (Apply secondary dimensions to dig deeper here.) Also check out your landing page(s) for this traffic too (applying an advanced segment could be useful here).
After you find out these details but still are left without an answer, you may want to try searching online for others who may have experienced similar traffic (now that you know the finer details) and you may find an answer there.
When used appropriately by the business it could alert the consumer of a relevant product/service and hopefully a special deal. This helps the consumer easily find the product/service and possibly save money. It also helps the business nab a sale they weren't necessarily organically ranking well for.
I'm someone currently specializing in analytics as a digital marketer at work (and learning R and a bit of Python in my spare time for greater and swifter data analysis!) Similar to your former superior, I'm also coming out of a liberal arts background. I just want to make it clear that someone like me, despite their background, agrees with you that the person you were reporting to was foolish to even bother A/B testing such minor elements at 100 hits/day.
Sadly, many foolish "SEOs"/"digital marketers"/"growth hackers" have this same mentality that such subtle changes--despite low traffic--still offer meaningful information to digest and further analyze. But hey, they gotta keep their boss/clients on-board for the thrill and payment, right? For everyone out there, remember that often outside the highest echelon of traffic levels, this testing is often performed by marketers with BAs in business administration, marketing, or liberal arts degrees like me. They are often not the statisticians referenced in this document. And sadly they may likely be people unlike me, unwilling to stretch out into a programming languages for data analysis and may have never cracked open a book on statistics. But frankly they have other things to worry about--like staying in your budget and overall digital branding and marketing strategy. Their budget and time is likely better applied outside of A/B testing.
If you have a mathematics background, reach out to your marketing department. If you consider yourself a math-wiz, reach out to the "growth hacker" or "SEO" a few feet away. They deal with the stuff you don't want to deal with. You deal with the stuff they don't want to deal with. Help each other out and engage in a conversation to better help your business. At least your superiors would appreciate it.
Personally, when it comes to landing pages, I test much more dramatic shifts--significant changes to the entire design or to the header imagery along with call-to-action. I don't buy into the testing of slight adjustments to things like font size or button color (and especially when there is such so low volume). That said, I've never worked with hundreds of thousands of visitors per month on a site, where anyone would imagine smaller changes for testing can make a bit more sense to look into.
gkoberger, I'm sorry you hated your first webdev internship. I would have hated it too.
On a side note (making specific reference to the document instead of the comment!), I really enjoyed point #3. This speaks very much to the often short-lived A/B testing of low-volume AdWords text ads. The data is often ALL over the place despite the (otherwise) "professional" use of the platform.
The SEO strats / growth hacks weren't entirely misguided. Rap Genius just didn't perfect their activity and didn't let it exist entirely behind closed doors. If Rap Genius wanted to risk it and engage in blackhat-like activity, it should have at least kept things more quiet and less spammy. Rap Genius should have kept the finer details, at least, to a phone call with the blogger.
Google can't see a local business handing their customers/client a $25 gift certificate in-person for a random positive Google+ review. Along the same thread, Google would also not be able to see Rap Genius flying out a community outreach rep to meet with a prolific music blogger at a bar to go over an exchange for a positive mention and authoritative link. Just saying.
I'm sure people can find the team page fun, but I saw it as uninformative; I see three co-founders and all I know at a glance is that one guy used to be with BuzzFeed. The front page of the site is also fun, but it's also informative.
I was also a little confused about why the LinkedIn URLs don't point to the public page but rather the URL used by those already logged into LinkedIn. I'm thinking this was probably just overlooked. I happened to be logged out, clicked on one of the icons, was required to log in, and because I use the 2-step authentication I wanted to just get back to browsing HN because all I had was just a low level of curiosity about the people behind the product.
At the SEO agency I work at we've been playing classical music on Pandora for the past few days and everyone is liking it. It's a pleasant change of pace from the alternative pop/rock we usually play.
I've been a bit more of a lurker than a participant here for a few years, but the agency I work at does do projects of this nature, specializing in local business: http://www.formicmedia.com/ .
If your friend is also considering keeping the project in-house, he or she may be interested in checking out more information at the URLs below to get more of an idea of the types of processes involved.
Everyone responds to substances differently. People in the thread have indicated that they would code poorly tipsy/drunk, but you claim otherwise and I believe ya.
Sometimes I like to have a couple drinks while working on a side project and I understand where you're coming from. I do a lot of writing and, like many people who enjoy writing, I understand that having a few drinks and getting "in the zone" can be great for the creative juices and process every once and a while.
Many people are "functioning alcoholics." I'm not saying you're an alcoholic but that concept is something to be aware of. The regular use of that much alcohol is a certainly problem for your physical health. I think you should look into other modes of altering your physical/mental state after you come home from work. Do you exercise regularly? How's your mental health? You say that you have the need, "even to the point of anxiety," to do other things than work on code at home. To me that sounds like a problem that could be solved in some other ways not involving alcohol. Have you thought about therapy/medication, or maybe something else?
I like brief little news feeds like this. They get to the point, there's not clutter with distracting pictures, etc. It's simple and all that's necessary.
On my computers I have Rainmeter installed and I link some general Google news feeds right onto my desktop: http://i.imgur.com/76Oc8.png . I wish I had more space though in my upper-right corner, could show more full headlines. A dual-monitor setup would probably be best...
