a/b testing tools comparison by popularity

As part of my role I have to routinely compare A/B testing and MVT testing tools, suppliers and solutions. Many different sites list these suppliers but I've tried to use a few public metrics to determine how popular these tools are with the general public. I call it 'Reach ranking' in that suppliers are ordered 1). by their Alexa.com rankings, 2). then their average monthly searches for their test platform as determined by Google Trends and finally 3). how many clients they list (if at all) on their website.

It's also interesting to see so many new companies and start-ups there are in the CRO business since I last did this audit back in 2010 and also how many providers are no longer around. It's a fierce and competitive business....
So here's what I've found as at August 2014. Sources: Alexa.com, Google Adwords and Own Vendor sites
updated 13th Oct 2014

Reach ranking	Vendor	Alexa volumes YTD	Avg. monthly searches for product	No. of publically listed clients
1	SiteSpect	381,175	98,600	55
2	adlucent	324,719	27,000	0
3	Google Experiments	10,806,000	802,000	0
4	Conversion multiplier	3,987,218	73,600	0
5	Global Maxer	3,210,851	51,000	0
6	Conductrics	2,333,087	14,700	0
7	Qubit	1,506,519	25,880	131
8	Avenso	1,020,946	1,030	32
9	Clickthroo	974,000	47,819	0
10	Adobe Test and Target	945,671	78,000	0
11	Visual Website Optimizer	908,000	13,102	0
12	Accenture	860,000	13,240	0
13	Webtrends	763,000	19,600	0
14	Hi Conversion	722,004	47,000	44
15	Get Smart Content	673,173	3,740	14
16	Convert	672,000	126,000	0
17	Taplytics	283,016	12,789	6
18	Optimizely	239,000	58,898	25
19	Maxymiser	149,697	6,980	78
20	Site Tuners	121,678	13,000	72
21	Autonomy	120,271	26,000	0
22	AB Tasty	93,689	27,000	31
23	Monetate	36,501	21,230	39
24	Unbounce	22,230	12,230	0
25	Hubspot	2,700	541	0
26	Genetify	0	6,830	0
27	Vanity	0	6,400	0

Happy testing : )

Google Trends for MVT Terminology

Out of curiousity I've ran a couple of queries in Google Trends to see what are the more popular terms in the world of web optimisation. I queried 'ab test' versus 'split test' and found the latter to be less widely used. However I was more keen to see exactly what terms people were using for 'MVT', 'multivariate',   versus the old skool 'multivariable'. I thought that the term MVT would be more widely used in this day & age, or indeed be on the increase. It turns out to be far less popular than multivariate and on a par with 'multivariable'. I think it would be handy if we all stuck to a single expression, my personal preference being 'MVT'! This would certainly help for job searchs too! This particular blog gets ranked well for the term 'MVT blog' but is off the radar for 'Multivariate blog' too, so there's another side-effect to of our mis-aligned industry terminolgy! : )

UPDATE 16th August 2011: Whilst Google Trends is still a good tool for examining terminology usage or just trending full stop a far better tool for this job is Google's Keyword Tool . Obvious really : )