Exam - google search

Question 1

Analogy - Internet as a directed graph + practical importance for modelling the web

Answer 1

sites hyperlink to other sites –> sometimes 2-way, sometimes one-way

serves as the basis for web discoverability + page ranking for search results

Question 2

web crawlers

Answer 2

aka bots/spiders

• automated entities that visit websites and collect information on what the content is
• may use provided web-maps to effectively collect content information that may otherwise be missed
• travel to websites using hyperlinks –> notes which websites link to which + how many hyperlinks
• websites get updated –> need to be re-crawled

Question 3

good webcrawler

Answer 3

• used to develope search queries –> collect info on web content to determine which websites are most relevant to given search results
• does not recrawl too frequently –> prevent stressing the web server with excess traffic
• obeys paywalls –> does not break content barriers unless directly permitted by site map code
• in unable to scrape personal info

Question 4

bad webcrawler

Answer 4

• scrapes web content to duplicate it –> conternt theft
• gather personal data to generate spam/phishing (may involve exploiting vulnerabilities)
• generates spam comments in forums/chat
• ad hosting costs $$$$ –> bot clicks teh ad to intentionally waste advertiser money
• excess web crawling –> DDOS

Question 5

Web indexing explained + factors influencing (TRUQD)

Answer 5

Analysis of web content to classify website –> use data to shape web results

factors:
- website trustworthiness
- content readability
- content uniqueness
- content quality
- duplication of existing content

TRUQD

Question 6

Website is crawled, analyzed and indexxed –> how is the index info stored

Answer 6

search engine stores keywords + sequence of appearance + frequency of each – >used to gauge relevance to diff topics

Question 7

assessing content quality (SHERMIUQ)

Answer 7

• Relevance to search query
• quality of writing
• Importance to the problem
• last updated (recent = better)
• mobile friendly (friendly = better)
• HTML structure (organized tags = better)
• Social media presence (more shares = better)
• Engagement (longer visits + more views = better)

SHERMIUQ
(social, HTML, Engag, Rel, Mobile, Import, Upda, Quality)

Question 8

page ranking - Hyperlinking + factors explained

Answer 8

• more redirects to the page = good
• redirected from trustworthy sites = good
• redirected from popular sites = good
• page is bookmarked more = good
• more web engagement = good

of redirects + trustworthiness/popularity of redirects + web engagement

Question 9

SEO - premise

Answer 9

Search engine optimization
- 3rd party company hired to increase web traffic to a website
- SEO reverse engineers the search algo –> determines what factors improve page rank

Question 10

blackhat/evil SEO

Answer 10

• keyword stuffing + content cloaking - embed keywords into website (boost rank) + embed hidden keywords (shows up in irrelevant search queries)
• embed hidden hyperlinks –> search engine crawlers combat this by analyzing if the links are even seen by the user (unseen = irrelevant)
• paying other websites to link to customer’s site
• spamming comments/chats/forums with hyperlinks –> more redirects# (if posted in popular sites, even better)
• content theft - steal higher quality content to improve site quality ranking

Question 11

black hat SEO sabotage

Answer 11

send bad traffic to competitors

eg redirects from shady/sketchy sites –> degrade page rank