Exciting stuff. This is why you hire an electrician rather than doing your own electrical work. They actually know what they’re doing.
Perhaps you could share how you would have set up the tests instead, and how the OP could improve his?
Why would parent be able to share test methods?
But the issue is that this article doesn't differentiate between branded and non-branded search terms. Did he run campaigns on non-branded searches like "Registration checker UK" to get build awareness of his service for new customers doing broad searches? Did he compare his organic non-branded search engine presence with his results when running paid ads?
Also, his service doesn't seem like a great match for the advertising channel either. It's hard to turn a profit when your service costs £8. The product - channel fit [0] doesn't seem right. So all in all, not such a great experiment.
https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-channel-fit-for-grow...
I was paying for in-search adverts across multiple search engines, I was commissioning custom made adverts to place in online used car market places. I was spending time optimising the 'bid' in automated advertising system, trying to get the best bang for buck
* custom made for whom?
* How did they select them?
* When did they show up?
* How were those terms selected?
* What terms did they select and which performed better?
* Did they track visits using different ones to see which had the best conversions?
* Optimizing can be most impressions or for quality. Basically show to as many people as possible vs fewer but better conversion. We don't know here, but I see most people doing most impressions.
Although sometimes the latter happens.
Rubber-soled shoes, one hand in back pocket at all times, non-conducting tools, and a helper with a wooden broom handle who knows mouth-to-mouth resuscitation ... these are all good recommendations. :)
Wooden broom handle is a non-conducting lever that a helper can use to separate you from the energized equipment. The current can cause your hand muscles to spasm in a "gripped" position, so the broom handle might need to be applied with some force. This is a last-resort catastrophic situation response.
Or, to put another way, you'll still see current at the heart even if it only flows through two fingers on the same hand. And even if it's a really small portion of the current, it doesn't take much to stop a heart.
Plus, there are a virtually unlimited number of proven tools for seeing if the circuit is live (even if there's no current flowing) to rely on such dodgy methods.
However it is not correct that the path of the current is not important.
Current will not flow between two points of equal electrical potential. There are some complications in the modelling (skin is a better insulator than internal bits, bags of salty moist flesh and bones are not resistively consistent, etc), but you're still in a much better situation to reduce potential difference across your heart, if the external potential difference occurs between two fingers on the same hand, vs two fingers on opposite hands.
OSHA says:
> The currents that pass through the heart or nervous system are the most dangerous. ... If a hand comes in contact with an electrical component with current (and at the same time the other side of your body makes a path to the ground), this will make the current pass through your chest and possibly produce injuries to the heart and lungs.
https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/2019-04/Basic_Elect...
I never claimed this. I claimed that even with the "safest" path through your body, the chance of your heart stopping is still there.
My point is that it's never "safe" to do, and as a homeowner (and even for a vast majority of non-lineman electricians) you never have to do it.
You absolutely did. You said it doesn't matter. It matters.
And I never said anyone would have to work on live wires. And I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Nevertheless, it does sometimes happen, and being a bit smart about it is a good idea.
> Is "one hand in back pocket at all times" to avoid a circuit across your heart?
To which I responded:
> it doesn't matter if the circuit appears to "crosses your heart", because some portion of it will still flow through your heart regardless.
Which, as we have by now agreed, is the case.
The dispute is about whether that 'portion' is enough to kill you, which I avoided making concrete statements on. I didn't take a stance because the answer is "it depends". The variables that make up the answer are vast, and many folks have survived lightning strikes and died to static discharges thanks to those variables.
> being a bit smart about it
I will still contend that working on live wires with bare skin at all is the opposite of "being a bit smart about it".
If your really being smart about it, and can't avoid it, use tools and protective gear created explicitly for working with live electricity. Or call someone with that gear.
Yes. Use those. But this discussion is about when you are working on live wires, and you know you are working on live wires.
I have however had jobs where I really did have to work on energized equipment. Sometimes 480VAC 3-phase, but more commonly single-phase 230/240 VAC 50/60Hz or 120VAC 60Hz. I was appropriately trained for this work.
Some homeowners are too stubborn to do the proper thing when handling electrical equipment. You're not going to change their minds!
The precautions I mentioned previously were some of the more convenient and generally applicable rules that are taught to people who have to work with equipment that is less safe. If followed by stubborn homeowners, they will also be safer. That was my whole point.
At worst, I'm acknowledging reality. Some people sometimes end up working on live wires. If you can't be talked out of this decision (or if it's legitimately not possible to avoid), a dose of caution is important.
Asking an untrained non-adult to be ready with a broom is a fantastically bad idea though. In the worst case, the kid lives with the memory of uselessly smacking their parent's corpse with a broom while the air fills with the smell of ozone and burnt flesh.
Anyway, home wiring is not hard, and many people do it for a living with a ridiculously low amount of qualification (and competence). If you are not touching the public wires, the safety rules are very simple and the odds are good that you can give them more care than somebody that has been doing the work every day for a decade.
(But well, if you don't know how to do it safely, or if you won't be bothered to follow them, you shouldn't be doing it.)
1. Seasonality. It sounds like they’re comparing a few months on to a few months off, which likely is affected more by the time of year than anything else. Year over year data would be a better comparison.
2. Attribution windows. If I serve you an ad, then “turn off my advertising”, then you convert, depending on how you look at the data my ad either did drive the conversion or did not. Likely he’s just looking at google analytics with default settings, so he’s missing post-view data and assists.
3. It’s not that difficult to run an actual test, and most advertising platforms give you tools and documentation on how to do so.
4. The author doesn’t understand advertising from a technical perspective and most likely is not doing the analysis correctly. The big red flag is when talking about buying a display ad and it only driving 2 conversions. It sounds like a prospecting ad, which is top of funnel and is not supposed to drive post click conversions. I highly doubt they had an impression tracker on the ad and looked at post view data with different attribution models. Or even multichannel funnel reports in ga. Those would show the actual impact of the banner, not just 2 post click conversions.
I don’t mean to bash the guy but this post is rehashed all the time here and I end up reposting the same stuff.