In a live Google hangout with John Mueller this morning on Google+, John said that Google doesn’t set up test sites for the most part to test and experiment with the search results. Instead, they test on a small percentage of live users, like 1% or so, so they can collect the data in a real world experiment.

Truth is, most of you know this is how Google works.

The question came in at the 10:15 minute mark:

John said:

Again, this isn’t really new but maybe, just maybe what we saw earlier this week with a potential Penguin launch was just a small limited test.

You can watch the video here:

Forum discussion at Google+.