Google - A Leading Search Engine

Everyone knows the name Google whether young or old. It is a leading Search Engine that everyone uses several times a day. But do you know how this wonderful thing born. I am glad if you are among them who want to know.

Google Inc. is an American based MNC that currently invests in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. In the year 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google as a research project when they were pursuing PhD at Stanford University in California. They began developing a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites where a website’s relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. They nick named their search engine BackRub because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. In the year 1997, Larry & Sergey decided to give a brand new name to BackRub and did some brainstorming only to come out with the name Google – a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros (meaning – their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web).
This was how Google – The Cyclops of web was born.

Google's Homepage 1998-99

                                              

                                                   

Google, Inc. was established on September 7, 1998 in a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. Page and Brin hired their first employee, Craig Silverstein, who was later to become Google's Director of Technology.

Google understand exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want. You can search everything through Google by just typing a keyword or phrase. It tells you today’s weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, when the next train will arrive as you’re standing on the platform, or your favorite team's score while they’re playing. You can shop, buy and even sell products in the world while sitting in a corner of your house. It gives you million results of your query. Google is now a day’s helpful in every field like education, medical, business, banks, shopping and, many more.

 By going Google, students and teachers have access to a whole new way of doing things. They can better collaborate in and out of the classroom. Professors can give real-time feedback in a Google document (no red pen necessary); and group projects can take place across continents instead of side-by-side in a library. This is just the beginning. As more schools go Google, we continue to be amazed by the creative ways students and teachers are using technology to work better together, and we’re looking forward to the surprises in store this school year. 

List of Google Products and Services:

Google is providing variety of services and products. I am going to list over few products and services which I have tried in some way or the other.

1. Google Mail

2. You Tube

3. Orkut

4. iGoogle

5. Google Chrome

6. Blogger

7. Google Adwords

8. Google Alerts

9. Google Adsense

10. Google Analytics

11. Android

12. Google Apps

13. Google Book Search

14. Google Calendar

15. Google Desktop

16. Google Earth

17. Google Translate

18. Google Music

19. Google Bookmarks

20. Google Dictionary

21. Feed Burner

22. Google Blog Search

23. Google Check Out

24. Google Drive

25. Google Maps

List of Google products is very long. There are 100+ products and services provided by Google.

Role of Google in SEO:

As name suggest SEO is abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization so this is totally depend on the search engine and as you all know Google is powerful and top search engine. Hence Google plays a vital role in SEO. It is very important to notice that the SEO industry relies heavily on the free SEO-related tools provided by Google or you can say that SEO is because of Google and other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, MSN etc. Google is leading and now a day’s top search engine with Alexa rank #2.

Submit a site to Google directly is through Add Url page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever. Google SEO is a hyper-competitive venture that requires intense focus and a thorough, up-to-date understanding of how Google algorithms and robots operate. Google provides a huge suite of products and services given above which are used to optimize a website like Google Search, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Blogger, Goole Alerts and many more.

Google's SEO Algorithms:

Google Panda:

Google Panda is a change to the Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011.The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

Google Panda was introduced to lower the search engine rankings of “low quality” sites, which are sites that have infringed the copyrights of others and are not very useful, thus providing better rankings for sites with “better content”. Google Panda is named after Mr. Navneet Panda and has actual people testing sites on content, design, reliability etc. It is updated from time to time, although the Google forums have been filled with complaints from websites claiming to hold low rankings despite the original content. Panda affects the operational base of a website by affecting the site as whole, not just individual pages.

Google Penguin: 

Google Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content, and others.

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites which are low -value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis and so on. Penguin started a fight against the spam sites making web surfing not only easier but safer. The penalty called the “over optimization penalty” is targeted against the spamming sites.

oDesk SMM (Social Media Marketing) Question Answers

Following are the oDesk SMM Questions. The yellow highlighted are the answers:

Q-1 What feature does LinkedIn offer for pay accounts?
a. Ability to post pictures
b. Increased abilities to connect directly and send messages to people
c. Ability to post in Groups and create a Group
d. Ability to block users

Q-2 Which of the following would be leveraging both social network and traditional marketing?

a. Handing out print advertisements with a coupon for a store

b. A print advertisement in a magazine which drives people to a website where there is a free trial offer

c. Posting an advertisement on a message board

d. Hosting a video ad on YouTube not otherwise seen elsewhere

Q-3 Why is it important to post to a blog regularly?

a. It reduces the cost per blog post

b. Keep readers engaged and also gives search engines content to index

c. It gives the social media marketing specialist something to do

d. It allows more chances for the company to put down the competition

Q-4 How can a company use the same material for both traditional and social network marketing?

a. Posting a luring comment on Twitter to the company site

b. Selling ad space on the company website

c. Utilizing a television ad campaign online as well on their site and sites such as YouTube

d. Creating a magazine print ad with the company website

Q-5 How is site traffic useful in evaluating marketing?

a. Overall site traffic can be followed and a general idea of marketing's impact on it can be determined

b. There is no correlation site traffic and marketing

c. Ads can send receivers to a specific landing page, which can be tracked

d. Product sales from the company website can be attributed directly to the marketing campaign

Q-6 How does YouTube serve a dual purpose in social media marketing?

a. It can be used as a company blog as well as video advertisements

b. It can be used for company pictures and videos

c. It can be used to host the company website as well as videos

d. It can be used as the forum for dispersing company videos, as well as a host when embedding videos in sites outside of YouTube

Q-7 How can LinkedIn serve the company aside from social network marketing?

a. Job openings can easily be dispersed to qualified candidates on LinkedIn

b. Company pictures can be posted to the profile

c. Negative press about the competition can be easily spread

d. Pricing lists can be posted

Q-8 How does a blog directly impact sales of a company?

a. It tells customers what products to buy

b. It can be used to talk negatively about the competition

c. It is typically used as the way to disperse company coupons

d. Typically a blog does not directly create sales

Q-9 What is “guerilla marketing”?

a. Marketing geared towards animal lovers

b. Marketing which relies on time and energy rather than a large dollar budget

c. Aggressive sales techniques

d. Marketing using a large scale national budget

Q-10 What non financial measure of marketing is important to track?

a. CEO performance

b. Number of new hires in marketing

c. Number of impressions

d. New customer acquisition

Q-11 Why is it important to have a company blog hosted on the company web domain versus a third party blogging site?

a. Required by law

b. Search engine rankings will include hits on the blog as part of the overall website hits

c. Requires less effort to maintain

d. Cannot be hacked easily

Q-12 How often should a marketing plan be revisited?

a. Never, once written it is complete

b. As often as needed in order to revisit the plan of action and revise any new actions

c. At company board meetings

d. During the financial review of the company each month

Q-13 How can a company convert posts on Twitter to sales?

a. Write demanding points about the competition

b. Write posts about personal information of the CEO

c. Creating posts which drive followers to their site

d. Constantly post updates about how the company needs more sales

Q-14 What does the product portion of the 4 P's of marketing focus on?

a. The product of service being marketed to consumers

b. The manufacturing process

c. How the price will be set for the product

d. How the new product will be promoted

Q-15 What is the general purpose of posting a video blog routinely to YouTube?

a. It allows the company to hard sell its products

b. It allows the company to drive website traffic to its blog

c. It can be used to disperse the company contact information

d. It allows followers to create a personal connection with the employees of the company

Q-16 Which type of marketing would a company blog be considered?

a. Social Network Marketing

b. Traditional Marketing

c. Both

d. Neither

Q-17 What additional feature does Facebook have that helps engage in a dialogue with followers?

a. Ability to leave message for each other

b. Ability to chat live

c. Ability to post updates live

d. Ability to post updates from a mobile device

e. All of the above

Q-18 Why is Facebook the most well rounded social networking marketing space?

a. It has been around the longest

b. It does not cost any money

c. It allows for video, short posts, long posts, articles, pictures-all aspects of other sites combined into one

d. It allows for pictures

Q-19 What is meant by the concept of “viral” in social media?

a. Social media which is spread to viewers by the consumer, growing in popularity

b. It is a method of branding a company

c. Advertising which can easily be emailed

d. Marketing advertisements which are not serious

Q-20 What is the term adopted for updates by Twitter users?

a. Tweets

b. Twoots

c. Twinks

d. Posts

Q-21 What would be the marketing budget section of a marketing plan consist of?

a. The cost to write the plan

b. The expected costs for each ad campaign based on the delivery method

c. The overall marketing budget for a year

d. The marketing personnel job descriptions

Q-22 What is “wiki”?

a. Form of blogging

b. A social networking site

c. Interconnected and user generated knowledge management systems

d. A tool for posting to social media networks

Q-23 What is the method for being linked to other users on LinkedIn?

a. Followers

b. Connections

c. Friends

d. Associates

Q-24 What does updates to Facebook status resemble most closely?

a. Video blogs

b. Posts on Twitter

c. A company white page

d. Articles on LinkedIn

Q-25 What is one measure a company can use to validate the usefulness of its video posts on YouTube?

a. The number of followers

b. The amount of views of the video

c. The number of videos the company has up

d. The sales volume of the company

Q-26 What can a company do on Facebook apart from their page to create a following?

a. Post more updates than usual

b. Post controversial posts

c. Use several pictures

d. Use Groups, both company originated and posting to other groups

Q-27 What is meant by “Marketing Creative”?

a. The employees in the marketing department

b. The content for marketing and its creative aspect

c. The methods used to distribute marketing material

d. The branding image of the company

Q-28 What is another term for “social media”?

a. Media Optimization

b. Consumer Generated Media

c. Advertising Socialization

d. Consumer Media Advertising

Q-29 How can a company place itself as an expert in a certain area of expertise?

a. Post updates which brag about the company

b. Actively answer questions in the Q&A section of the site

c. Post comments on competitors pages stating how they are inferior

d. Answer questions in all categories, even ones the company is not in business of.

Q-30 What style of blogging would be most effective for building relationships with customers?

a. Using the blog only for press releases

b. Posting resumes of the company officers

c. Posting articles about how terrific the company is, and putting down the competition

d. Writing posts about the company and its ups and downs from inside, personalized approach

Q-31 What traditional marketing technique is YouTube closest to?

a. Print advertising

b. Television advertising

c. Radio advertising

d. Mail Advertising

Q-32 What does the Answers section of LinkedIn allow people to do?

a. Users to post questions directly to companies

b. Post questions based on a category, and receive responses from experts in the field

c. Posts links to the company press releases

d. A meeting place for new connections

Q-33 What do Connections on LinkedIn effectively represent?

a. Random strangers who found the company

b. People the company has sold product or services to

c. An avenue to disperse coupons

d. People and other companies the user is connected to directly

Q-34 What is the character limit for posts on Twitter?

a. No limit

b. 100 characters

c. 140 characters

d. 200 characters

Q-35 What should a company post on Twitter?

a. New product launches

b. Significant company news

c. Occasional day to day posts of interest

d. All of the above

Q-36 Which of the following is an important aspect of creating blogs and posting content?

a. Using a witty user name

b. Posting at least once a month to the blog

c. Social Media Optimization

d. Using humor

Q-37 What type of status updates would drive visitors to the company site?

a. An update telling friends they hope to see them all soon

b. A link to a new press release hosted on the company site

c. A link to a third party hosting a company press release

d. A picture of the CEO

Q-38 How can a company ensure that the proper audience finds their YouTube videos?

a. Post links on the company blog to the YouTube videos

b. There is no method to effectively direct people to the company videos

c. Use of keywords

d. Sending out mail advertisements

Q-39 What is meant by A/B testing in marketing?

a. Testing of 2 different products

b. Testing 2 versions of an advertisement to see which elicits the best response

c. Clinical testing of medical products before legally allowing them for sale

d. Testing via 2 mediums, such as radio and television

Q-40 What is “social media optimization”?

a. Creating content which easily creates publicity via social networks

b. Writing clear content

c. Creating short content which is easily indexed

d. Hiring people to create content for social networks

b

oDesk SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Question Answers

Following are the oDesk SEO Questions. The yellow highlighted are the answers: 

Q-1  _________use both crawlers and directories to generate relevant results. 

a. Crawler- based Search Engines
b. Human Powered Directories
c. Hybrid Search Engines
d. Meta Search Engines

Q-2  Google gives priority to themed in-bound links.

a. True
b. False

Q-3  Why is it a bad idea from the SEO perspective to host free articles and write ups that are very common on the internet.

a. Because they will not lead to fresh traffic
b. Because you could get penalized by search engines for using duplicate content
c. Because you will not get the benefits of proper keyword targeting
d. Because people could turn up claiming copy right infringement

Q-4  If a website's search engine saturation with respect to a particular search engine is 20%, what does it mean? 

a. 20% of the WebPages of the website have been indexed by the search engine
b. Only 20% of the pages of the website will be indexed by the search engine 
c. 20% of the websites pages will never be indexed
d. The website ranks in the first 20% of all websites indexed by the search engine for its most Important search terms

Q-5  Which of the following is an ethical SEO Technique?

a. Creating a subdomain with the hottest keyword and creating duplicate copies of existing pages on it
b. Filling your pages with keywords, whether relevant to the page content or not
c. Creating a page which serves a different content to the search engine bots and different to human users
d. None of the above

Q-6  Which of the following search engines or directories provides the directory search results for Yahoo?

a. Windows Live
b. Yahoo Directory
c. Google
d. Wikipedia
e. DMOZ

Q-7  A Hallway Page is used to:

a. Attract visitors from the search engines straight onto the Hallway Page
b. Organize the Doorway Pages
c. Help people navigate to different Doorway Pages
d. Enable search engine bots to index the Doorway Pages

Q-8  The following robots meta tag directs the search engine bots: <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow"> 

a. Not to index the homepage and not to follow the links in the page
b. Not to index the page and not to follow the links in the page
c. To index the page and not to follow the links in the page
d. Not to index the page but to follow the links in the page

Q-9 Search engines do not index some common ( such as “or”. “and”. “when”. And “in” ) within the webpage. What are these common words called?

a. Barrier words
b. Non- indexable works
c. Slow words
d. Stop words

Q-10  What is Anchor Text?

a. It is the main body of text on a particular web page
b. It is the text within the left or top panel of a web page
c. It is the visible text that is hyper linked to another page
d. It is the most prominent text on the page that the search engines use to assign a title to the page

 Q-11 Which of the following factors have an impact on the Google PageRank?

     

a. The total number of inbound links to a page of a web site

b. The subject matter of the site providing the inbound link to a page of a web site

c. The text used to describe the inbound link to a page of a web site

d. The number of outbound links on the page that contains the inbound link to a page of a web site

Q-12 Which of the following activities could be looked down upon by Google as per their quality guidelines?
a. Using automated website submission software
b. Loading pages with irrelevant links
c. Intentionally adding keywords to the TITLE tags and ALT attributes
d. Registering misspellings of well-known websites

Q-13 If you enter ‘Help site:www.expertrating.com’ in the Google search box, what will Google search for?

a. It will open up the Google help pages applicable to  www.expertrating.com
b. It will find pages about help within www.expertrating.com
c. It will only find page titles about help within www.expertrating.com
d. It will direct you to the request page for re-indexing of www.expertrating.com

Q-14 Which of the following statements about search engine optimization techniques are correct:

a. Making a keyword bold does not influence the way that the search engine looks at the keywordb. Website with deep linking are looked at favorably by search engines
c. Search engine robots follow the first link they find to any particular page and they do not follow additional links to the same paged. It is not a good idea to have the same anchor text for all inbound links as it could look automated to the search engines

Q-15 What is the name of the search engine technology due to which a query for the word 'actor' will also show search results for related words such as actress, acting or act?

a. Spreading
b. Dilating
c. RSD (real time synonym detection)d. Stemming
e. Branching

Q-16 What is the term for Optimization strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability/validity?

a. Red hat techniques 
b. Silver hat techniques
c. Grey hat techniques
d. Shady hat techniques

Q-17 Which of the following statements regarding website content are correct

a. If you have two versions of a document on your website, Google recommends that you only allow the indexing of the better version
b. Linking to a page inconsistently does not affect the way Google views the page/s. Examples of inconsistent linking could be http://www.expertrating.com/page/and http://www.expertrating.com/page and http://www.expertrating.com/page/index.htm
c. Syndicating your content could lead to Google viewing the material as duplicate
d. Placeholders for pages which do not have content are never viewed as duplicate content by Google


Q-18 Which of the following statements about the Google Sitemap are correct:

a. Repeated submission of the Sitemap to Google could be penalized
b. It is possible to create and submit specialized Sitemaps to Google for Video and Mobile content
c. The Sitemap acceptable to Google follows an XML format


Q-19 Which of the following website design guidelines have been recommended by Google?

a. Having a clear hierarchy and text links
b. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link
c. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you should break the site map into separate pages
d. Keeping the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)
e. Use less than 30 images or graphics per page


Q-20 How are site maps important for the search engine optimization process?

a. Site maps help the search engine editorial staff to quickly go through a website; hence ensuring quicker placement
b. Google gives credit to the websites having site maps. The Google Bot looks for the keyword or title "Site Map" on the home page of a website.
c. Site maps help the search engine spider pick up more pages from the website
d. None of the above


Q-21 While optimizing your website it is important to generate the right type of traffic, how does the Bounce Rate information help in this regard?

a. By letting you know the percentage of users who entered the website and then went on to visit additional pages
b. By letting you know the percentage of users who entered the website and then left without viewing any other page
c. By letting you know the percentage of users who decided to go back to the source from where they found your website
d. By letting you know the percentage of users who left your website within 10 seconds of viewing the first page


Q-22 While grading your website, Google gives credit to outbound links pointing to authority websites?

a. True
b. False

Q-23 Which of the following statement about RSS is correct?

a. It is a form of XML
b. It stands for Realtime streamlined syndication
c. It is a good way of displaying static information
d. It is a Microsoft technology

Q-24  Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to yahoo. What is performed by the link:Operator?

a. It shows all the outbound links from the URL
b. It shows how many pages of the site yahoo is pointing toc. It shows all the pages that point to that URL
d. It show URLs with broken links

Q-25 Which of the following statements is correct with regard to the images within a webpage?

a. Images cannot be spidered by the search engines
b. Important keywords related to the image should be placed in the ALT text
c. Images should always be kept close to the top of a webpage
d. Image maps should be used while including the images


Q-26 Which of the following actions could get you banned by Google?

a. Hiding text on the webpage 
b. stuffing keywords on the webpage
c. Linking to sites banned by Google
d. None of the above

Q-27 If your site is not appearing in google search results because of some unethical SEO practices in the recent past,_____________
a. Abandon and close your website permanently.b. Modify the page contents make them useful and relevant to the human users, and request Google to reconsider your site.
c. Start a PPC campaign to get your site include in the sponsored results.
d. It is better to discontinue the website and shift your webpages to a fresh website a new domain name.

Q-28 What does the 302 server response code signify?

a. It signifies conflict; too many people wanted the same file at the same time
b. The page has been permanently removed
c. The method you are using to access the file is not allowed
d. The page has temporarily removed
e. What you requested is just too big to process

Q-29 State whether the following statement is true or false.
A Sitemap provides a list of internal links to user accessible pages on a website.

a. True
b. False

Q-30 Which of the following conditions will Google treat favorably from the 'Relevancy' perspective?
a. The website offering products and services to the visitors’ country
b. A website that provides free content for the related keywords
c. Hidden keywords on the home page matching the search term
d. Image Alt tags on the home page matching the search term         

Q-31 Which of the following free tools/websites could help you identify which city in the world has the largest search for the keyword – “six sigma”?

a. Yahoo Search Term Suggestion Tool
b. Alexa
c. Google Traffic Estimator
d. Google Trends
e. WordTracker

Q-32 Are RSS/Atom feeds returned in Google's search results?

a. Yes
b. No

Q-33 Implementing a 301 Permanent Redirects on the old pages to redirect to the new pages is a good idea from the SEO perspective.

a. True
b. False

Q-34 Cloaking is a controversial SEO technique. What does it involve?

a. Increasing the keyword density on the web pages
b. Offering a different set of web pages to the search engines
c. Hiding the keywords within the webpage
d. Creating multiple pages and hiding them from the website visitors

Q-35 All major search engines are case sensitive.

a. True
b. False

Q-36 What does the term Keyword Prominence refer to?

a. It refers to the fact that the importance of choosing high traffic keywords leads to the best return on investment
b. It refers to the importance attached to getting the right keyword densityc. It refers to the fact that the keywords placed in important parts of a webpage are given priority by the search enginesd. It refers to the fact that the keywords in bold font are given priority by the search engines

 Q-37 What is the main reason for the effectiveness of optimizing a webpage towards a long tail keyword search? 

a. There are more long tail searches than shorter keyword queries
b. Search engines often pass on long tail searches to lesser known and new websites
c. Search engines do not pass on long tail search traffic to websites that rank high for shorter keyword searches
d. There are fewer websites that have targeted such keywords

Q-38 Which of the following statements is correct with regard to natural links? 

a. They are two way links (reciprocal links)
b. They are from authority website
c. They are voluntary in nature
d. They are from .edu or .gov extension websites

Q-39 What is the function of "indexer" part of the Google search engine?

a. It helps to retrieve web pages from the world wide web
b. It helps to gather information from other search engines
c. It helps to sort the documents that Google has retrieved
d. It helps to generate meaningful results based upon the user's search term

Q-40 What is the illegal act of copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site called?

a.Traffic jacking
b.Visitors Jacking
c.View Jacking
d. Page Jacking