Webmaster Quiz

*Disclaimer: This quiz provides guidelines and is not an exhaustive list of issues/causes webmasters may encounter. Discussion of specific cases is encouraged on the Webmaster Help Forum.

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1. You have moved your site to a new domain name. For users and search engines, the preferred way to permanently redirect traffic is:

a) 301 redirect
b) 302 redirect
c) Add links on your old site to the new one
d) Have the old site show an error page with the new domain name written on it

2. Your server is going to be moved and unavailable for a day. What should you do?

a) Call Google and let them know not to crawl
b) Use the robots.txt to disallow crawling on that day
c) Return "Network Unavailable (503)" with a helpful message to all requests
d) Install Wifi and make sure the server stays online during the move. Any downtime is deadly.

3. Your website is not in the index 5 days after you've put it online; what should you do?

a) Do the Google dance
b) Continue working on the site
c) Buy a different domain name and copy the site
d) Reset your page counter to a high number

4. Your homepage has 287 errors in the W3C validator. What is the maximum number of URLs that Google could index from your site?

a) None
b) All except 287
c) 287
d) All

5. You bought multiple domain names and want them to all show the same website. What should you do with them?

a) Use frames
b) Use a 301 redirect
c) Duplicate the content
d) Use a CNAME DNS alias

6. 192 PDF files from your /private-files/ folder have gotten indexed and you need to remove them from Google's search results. What's the fastest way to do this?

a) Just delete the files and wait
b) Disallow all PDF files in your robots.txt file
c) Use the public removal tool
d) Disallow the folder in robots.txt and request removal of the whole folder in Webmaster Tools

7. You need to prevent Google from indexing any content in the new folder /private-files/. What's the best way to do this?

a) Make sure not to link to those files
b) Use server-side authentication (username/password) for this folder
c) Use Webmaster Tools to reduce the crawl rate to zero
d) Disallow this folder in your robots.txt

8. Your site changed all URLs from .php to .asp, what do you need to do?

a) Use the URL removal tool
b) Add a robots.txt disallow for "/*.php"
c) 301 redirect the old URLs to the new ones
d) Add a robots.txt disallow for "/*.php" and 301 redirect the old URLs to the new ones

9. You have a country-coded domain name called example.es. To associate your site with Spain, you need to:

a) Include the following tag in your HTML: <META NAME="country" content="Spain">
b) Use the Geographic target tool to set it to Spain
c) None of this is necessary. Google should already associate a domain ending in .es with Spain.
d) Include a language meta tag: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="Spanish">

10. You have some pages completely in Spanish and others completely in English. How would you tell Google about this?

a) Specify the language in the opening HTML tag: <HTML lang="es">
b) Include a language meta tag, eg: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="Spanish">
c) No need to do anything. Google should figure it out.
d) It is required that the content be placed in language-based folders (e.g., http://example.com/es/ and http://example.com/en/)

11. Which of the following is NOT against Google's Webmaster Guidelines?

a) Running tests on a site that result in some users seeing one version of a page and other users seeing another version
b) Showing search engines one file and then showing all users another file
c) Showing search engines and users the same file, but using JavaScript or CSS to hide some of the main text content in ways that the user could never trigger to be visible
d) Using a Javascript redirect to send users to a page on your site with better content

12. All of the following can be link schemes that can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results EXCEPT:

a) Links to other sites that you think your users will find interesting or useful
b) Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
c) Excessive reciprocal links or link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
d) Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

13. What does it mean when a robots.txt file contains "User-agent: *" and "Disallow:"?

a) Allow all search engines to crawl your site
b) Don't allow any search engines to crawl your site
c) Don't allow search engines to crawl anything but the root of your site
d) Prevents trailing slash in URL from appearing in search results

14. What does it mean when a robots.txt file contains "User-agent: *" and "Disallow: /"?

a) Allow all search engines to crawl your site
b) Don't allow any search engines to crawl your site
c) Don't allow any search engines to crawl your homepage
d) This directive is not legal in the robots.txt file

15. You may see a message in your Webmaster Tools Message Center for the following instances:

a) Violations of our Webmaster Guidelines
b) Changes you make in the Crawl Rate setting
c) When we find "infinite crawl spaces" on your site
d) When you have reported paid links
e) All of the above

16. If you're using First Click Free, the page displayed to users who come there from Google search results must be identical to the content that is shown to Googlebot.

TRUE
FALSE

17. It's generally a best practice to convey important content on your site with:

a) Images that use descriptive alt text
b) Text
c) Flash

18. Duplicate content within your site is unlikely to be problematic if:

a) The original source doesn't notice
b) You use the rel="canonical" link element or the new Webmaster Tools feature called Parameter Handling to ignore specified URL parameters
c) You change small pieces of text or anchor text on each duplicated page
d) You are the author of the content

19. You would like your site to be found for some keywords related to your content which are only found in images on the page. How do you do this?

a) Place the keywords in an image on the website
b) Use the "keywords" meta tag
c) Use the "description" meta tag
d) Use the "alt" attribute or include the keywords in your text
e) Place them in tiny text in the footer

20. Your Webmaster Tools account lists a lot of "robots.txt unreachable" errors. What should you do?

a) Create a robots.txt file
b) Delete your robots.txt file
c) Contact your hoster or server administrator
d) Link to your robots.txt file from the homepage

21. Your Webmaster Tools account lists keywords like "viagra" and "ringtones" even though your site is about kittens. What could this mean?

a) Your cat is secretly using your Google Checkout account
b) A hacker could have added those words to your site's content, or someone could have spammed your blog with comments that include those words
c) A competitor is trying to harm your site by linking to it with these keywords
d) This is probably coming from a different site on the same shared server and can be ignored

22. Your SEO has created ranking reports for your site. The results don't match what you're seeing. Why?

a) Ranking can vary depending on the user's location
b) Ranking can vary from user to user
c) Ranking can vary from one day to another
d) All of the above

23. Your site was hacked. What should you do to remedy the situation?

a) Remove the hacked content
b) Update your software
c) Check your log files
d) Contact/notify your hoster/server administrator
e) All of the above

24. What's a good way to submit an XML Sitemap file to Google?

a) Just call it "/sitemap.xml". It'll be found automatically
b) Link to it from your homepage
c) Use Google Webmaster Tools
d) Send an ICMP "ping" to "www.google.com"

25. One of your pages is only listed with a title (but no snippet) in the search results. What could the problem be?

a) The URL is disallowed via robots.txt
b) The URL has not been crawled yet
c) The page has a "nosnippet" robots meta tag on it
d) The page may not have any textual content
e) Any of the above
f) None of the above

26. Your web shop has 100 products and a site: query shows 50,000 URLs indexed. What might this mean?

a) There could be a canonicalization problem
b) Your Page Not Found error page may not return a 404
c) Your site could be hacked
d) You might be exposing session IDs to crawlers
e) Any of the above

27. Google guarantees indexing for the following types of sites:

a) AdWords advertisers
b) AdSense publishers
c) Sites verified in Webmaster Tools
d) Any site containing LOLcat images
e) None of the above

28. You have limited bandwidth and would like Google to crawl your site less frequently. What should you do?

a) Disallow crawling of your site (or portions of your site) via robots.txt during peak usage times
b) Set the priority for all URLs on your site to "0.0" in your XML Sitemap during peak usage times
c) Set a custom crawl rate in Webmaster Tools

29. Your server has limited bandwidth resources and you would like Google only to crawl at night. What should you do?

a) Send an email to info@google.com
b) Add "Allow: 11pm-7am" to your robots.txt file
c) Have your server respond with HTTP result code 503 to all users when it's bogged down
d) Dynamically change your robots.txt to disallow crawling during the day

30. Does the amount of money spent on Google AdWords influence how your site ranks in Google Search?

a) Yes
b) Sometimes
c) No

31. One day you read that a free security update--WyszKablamCMS v.2.7.8--has been released. What should you do?

a) Ignore it
b) Change your server password
c) Read about the update, install it, and address any lingering vulnerabilities or compatibility issues

32. One thing Google has found to be true: "Focus on the ______ and all else will follow."

a) SERPs
b) conversions
c) links
d) user

33. Your site is flagged as having malware, but you can't find the malware. What do you do?

a) Submit a reconsideration request
b) Post in the Google Webmaster Help Forum to ask for help
c) Tweet a complaint to @google
d) Abandon your domain name and start over again

34. Where do you put your robots.txt?

a) Search for it in Google
b) In Webmaster Tools
c) The root directory of your domain or subdomain(s)
d) In the folder you want to disallow

35. "Unreachable robots.txt" in Webmaster Tools crawl errors means:

a) You don't have a robots.txt file
b) We couldn't reach the robots.txt file on your server
c) Your robots.txt file disallows access to your robots.txt file
d) Your robots.txt file requires a password

36. The number of indexed pages shown in a site: query for your site seems to vary. This could be due to:

a) Data centers - Different Google computers showing different info
b) Being logged in/out - Google's "Personal Search" filter may be influencing results
c) Duplicate content filters are affecting the results
d) Any of the above

37. Your site has 200 pages, but Google only found 5 pages from your site. What could be the cause of this?

a) Google hates your site
b) Google is involved in a mass conspiracy against businesses in your sector/industry
c) Even when a site is crawlable and indexable, it can take Google time to fully explore it

38. You are thinking about putting some links on your site for advertising revenue, which of the below is the correct choice?

a) Just add the links
b) Add the links then try to "hide" them off the page, with small text, making the colour match the background
c) Use the rel="nofollow" HTML microformat in the <a> tag of the links

39. Disallowing via robots.txt prevents Googlebot from "seeing" 301 redirects, meta nofollow, and noindex directives.

TRUE
FALSE

40. How do you help bots crawl your site more efficiently with If-Modified-Since?

a) Configure your webserver to ignore any repeated requests from the same source IP
b) Respond when appropriate with 304 "Not modified"
c) Add the "If-Modified-Since" meta tag to HTML pages

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