Chapter 22 — Quiz

Twenty-four self-check questions: sixteen multiple choice, then eight short answer. Answer them before you open the key at the bottom. This quiz tests the mechanism of links — PageRank, what makes a link valuable, the attributes, and the honesty habits (why buying links and chasing DA are traps).

Part 1 — Multiple choice

Q1. PageRank's core insight is best stated as: - A. Pages with more words rank higher - B. A link is a vote, and votes from more authoritative pages count for more - C. Google counts every link on the web equally - D. The oldest pages rank first

Q2. In the PageRank formula, dividing a linking page's authority by its number of outbound links models: - A. That a page passes more authority the more it links out - B. That a page splits its vote among all the pages it links to - C. That outbound links are penalized - D. That only the first link on a page counts

Q3. A referring domain is: - A. The same thing as a backlink - B. A unique website that links to you, counted once regardless of how many links it sends - C. Any domain you link out to - D. A domain you have disavowed

Q4. Which link is worth the most, all else equal? - A. A footer link from an unrelated high-traffic site - B. An in-content editorial link from a relevant, trusted site - C. 60 links from one overseas directory - D. A comment link with an exact-match commercial anchor

Q5. The sponsored attribute is the correct label for: - A. A link inside a user comment - B. A paid, advertising, or affiliate link - C. Any link you don't want indexed - D. An internal navigation link

Q6. As of 2020, Google treats nofollow, sponsored, and ugc as: - A. Absolute directives it must obey - B. Tags that delete the link from the index - C. Hints it may use for crawling and ranking at its discretion - D. Signals only Bing uses

Q7. "PageRank is dead" is: - A. Entirely true — Google stopped using links - B. True of the public Toolbar score (retired 2016) but false of the underlying signal, which Google still uses internally - C. A confirmed Google announcement - D. True only for e-commerce sites

Q8. The Penguin update (2012) primarily targeted: - A. Slow websites - B. Thin content - C. Manipulative link profiles (spam, paid links, unnatural anchors) - D. Duplicate title tags

Q9. Which is a manipulation fingerprint Google can detect in a link profile? - A. A slow, steady growth in referring domains - B. A sudden spike of hundreds of links from unrelated sites with identical commercial anchors - C. A mix of follow and nofollow links - D. Links from topically relevant industry sites

Q10. Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR) are: - A. Google's official site-authority scores - B. Third-party estimates from tool vendors that Google does not use to rank - C. Ranking factors confirmed by Google - D. The same as PageRank

Q11. External links and internal links, respectively: - A. Both manufacture authority from nothing - B. Bring authority into a site, and distribute it around the site - C. Are interchangeable - D. Are both penalized by Penguin

Q12. Buying links that pass PageRank is: - A. Fine if the links are relevant - B. A violation of Google's link-spam policy, addressed by devaluation or a manual action - C. Safe as long as you use exact-match anchors - D. Recommended for new sites

Q13. Why is buying links especially dangerous, per §22.6? - A. It never produces any ranking gain - B. Detection is retroactive — a scheme can be devalued or actioned months after it "worked," taking rankings with it - C. It only affects images - D. Google emails you a warning first, every time

Q14. An editorial link is one that: - A. You placed yourself in a directory - B. You paid a newspaper for - C. A publisher freely chose to give because your content earned it - D. Appears only in a footer

Q15. PageRank sculpting with nofollow (circa 2009) stopped working because: - A. Google banned internal links - B. The authority that would have flowed through a nofollowed link evaporates rather than being redistributed - C. nofollow was deleted - D. It only ever worked on external links

Q16. The single most useful triage question when someone brags about a backlink count is: - A. "What's your Domain Authority?" - B. "How many referring domains?" - C. "How old is your domain?" - D. "How many words per page?"

Part 2 — Short answer

Q17. State PageRank's insight in one sentence, capturing both "a link is a vote" and "votes are weighted."

Q18. Name the four dimensions that determine a link's value (per §22.3), and add the fifth quality that separates the safest links from the rest.

Q19. Give two reasons the myth "nofollow links are worthless" is false.

Q20. In one sentence each, explain what external links and internal links each contribute to a page's authority, and why the water-heater page needed both.

Q21. Why is chasing a higher Domain Authority score a flawed goal? Name what DA actually is and one risk the goal encourages.

Q22. Describe two fingerprints Google can use to detect a bought-link scheme.

Q23. A paid podcast sponsorship links to your site. Which rel attribute should the link carry, and why does correct labeling keep you compliant?

Q24. (Ties to Chapter 2.) Sort onto the evidence tiers: "More referring domains cause higher rankings." What is the honest restatement?

Answer key (try every question first) **Part 1 — Multiple choice** 1. **B** — A link is a vote, weighted by the voter's authority. 2. **B** — A page splits its vote among all the pages it links to (the $C(T_i)$ divisor). 3. **B** — A unique linking website, counted once; far more meaningful than raw backlink count. 4. **B** — The in-content editorial link from a relevant, trusted site wins on every dimension. 5. **B** — A paid, advertising, or affiliate link. 6. **C** — Hints, not directives, since March 2020. 7. **B** — True of Toolbar PageRank (retired 2016), false of the internal signal Google still uses. 8. **C** — Manipulative link profiles. 9. **B** — A sudden spike of unrelated links with identical commercial anchors. 10. **B** — Third-party estimates; not used by Google to rank. 11. **B** — External links bring authority in; internal links distribute it. 12. **B** — A link-spam violation, met with devaluation or a manual action. 13. **B** — Detection is retroactive; the fuse is delayed. 14. **C** — Freely given by a publisher because the content earned it. 15. **B** — The would-be-flowing authority evaporates rather than being redistributed. 16. **B** — "How many referring domains?" **Part 2 — Short answer** 17. PageRank treats each link as a vote for the linked page, and weights each vote by the authority of the page casting it (an important page's link counts for more), splitting that authority among all the pages it links to. 18. **Authority, relevance, anchor text, placement** — and the fifth quality is *how the link was acquired*: an **editorial** (freely given) link is the safest; paid/exchanged/self-placed links are the risk. 19. Any two: nofollow links from trusted sites drive real referral traffic and brand awareness; since 2020 Google may treat them as ranking hints; and a natural profile *contains* nofollow links, so an all-follow profile looks manipulated. 20. **External links** bring authority *into* the site (filling the reservoir); **internal links** distribute it to specific pages (routing the water). The water-heater page needed internal links (Ch 15) to receive authority *and* the site to have earned enough external authority to be worth distributing. 21. DA is a *third-party* vendor estimate that *predicts* ranking ability from link data; Google does not use it. Chasing the number optimizes a thermometer, and because it is link-driven, it tends to encourage the link-buying behavior that creates a liability. 22. Any two: unnatural link velocity (a sudden spike); shared footprints across a network (same sites, templates, hosting, "write for us" boilerplate); bulk irrelevant sources; over-optimized exact-match anchors; presence in known link-selling networks. 23. **`rel="sponsored"`** (a `nofollow` would also work as "not an endorsement," but `sponsored` is the precise label). It keeps you compliant because Google's guidelines require that paid links not pass PageRank; disclosing the paid link with `sponsored` is exactly how you avoid a link scheme. 24. **Strong correlation, labeled as such — not proven causation.** Honest restatement: "Pages with more referring domains *tend to* rank higher (a correlation found repeatedly in tool-vendor studies); better sites also attract more links, so this is not proof that links alone cause the ranking" — and never a fabricated percentage.