Comment by robomartin

A lot of the reasons for which this algo can optimize in the wrong direction have been covered here. In general terms, I agree with all of it.

I am a big fan of two techniques that I feel would enhance an approach like the one suggested: FIR filters and Decay.

Simply put: I believe it is important to have a mechanism through which decisions are not made too quickly. A finite impulse response filter would take care of this very well.

In addition to that, older measurements should not carry the same importance as nice-fresh data. Who cares what people thought about the buttons (or whatever) a month or two ago? The crowd visiting the site this week could have been affected by solar flares. Maybe they prefer something else.

Obviously you need enough traffic to be able to use such techniques.

Not sure it's worth the complexity in all cases.