Chapter 27 — Exercises

Work these in order; they run from recall to open-ended application. Items marked † have full worked solutions in the answers appendix — try them before you peek. Many ask you to open Search Console on your own site (it's free — set it up if you haven't); that's where this chapter's learning actually sticks. No answers in this file.

Reminder from the chapter: never promise or assume a ranking, never fabricate a number, and read trends over weeks, not single-day wobbles. When an item asks for figures, label them as your own estimates.

Recall

27.1 † Name the four headline metrics of the Performance report, and give the one-line definition of each.

27.2 Distinguish an impression from a click in one sentence, and state the formula for click-through rate (CTR).

27.3 † Explain, in two sentences, why average position is not the same as "the position we rank."

27.4 What is data anonymization in the query report, and what visible consequence does it have when you add up the query rows?

27.5 Name the two Search Console property types and, for each, one thing it covers that the other does not.

Applied reasoning

27.6 † A page shows 10,000 impressions, a 0.9% CTR, and an average position of 3.1. Is this most likely a listing problem or a ranking problem? Name the fix and the chapter that teaches it.

27.7 A different page shows 10,000 impressions, a 0.9% CTR, and an average position of 24. Same "low CTR" — why is the correct response completely different from 27.6?

27.8 † Your total clicks are flat month over month, but your average position on five priority non-branded queries has climbed from ~15 to ~9. Is the SEO working? Explain what you'd tell an impatient owner, and which theme of the book this illustrates.

27.9 Impressions for a page are rising while clicks stay flat. Give two distinct explanations, and say what you'd look at to tell them apart.

27.10 Why does the chapter insist that verification "hands you the instrument panel" but is "not a ranking signal"? What would you say to a client who thinks adding their site to Search Console will boost rankings?

27.11 † Explain why the query table showing "our top ten queries" is trustworthy, but reading it as "these are all the queries we get traffic from" is always wrong.

27.12 A colleague checks Search Console every morning and panics at each daily dip. Give two reasons daily checking trains you to react to noise, and state the cadence the chapter recommends instead.

Diagnose: "what's actually wrong here?"

27.13 † A brand-new page has been live three weeks and gets zero impressions in Search Console. Walk the first three things you'd check, in order, using the pipeline from Chapter 1. Where does URL Inspection come in?

27.14 Overnight, a site's total impressions collapse to near zero and the Indexed count in the Page indexing report drops sharply, but the Manual Actions report reads "No issues detected." What class of problem is this (name it), and which report/tool confirms the cause?

27.15 † A page you rewrote last week still shows old content when you check "View Crawled Page" in URL Inspection. Explain why, and the exact steps (and their honest limits) to get Google to see the new version.

27.16 A page's average position is a healthy 4, but its CTR is far below what position 4 usually earns, and you confirm on a live search that an AI Overview and a "People Also Ask" box sit above it. Is the low CTR a title problem? What is the honest read, and what are the realistic moves?

Audit your own site (free tools)

27.17 † Verify your own site (or a site you manage) in Search Console. Record which property type you chose and which verification method you used, and explain in one sentence why that choice fit your access.

27.18 In your Performance report (last 3 months, Queries tab, sorted by impressions), list your top five non-branded queries and their position and CTR. Which one is the biggest "so close" opportunity, and why?

27.19 Open your Page indexing report. Record the Indexed and Not-indexed counts, then scan the not-indexed reasons for any page you want ranking that's excluded (noindex, robots.txt, 404). Report what you found — including "nothing alarming," which is a valid and common result.

27.20 † Run URL Inspection on your most important page. Report: Is it on Google? Last crawl date? Did Google's chosen canonical match yours? Then use "Test Live URL → View Tested Page → HTML" and confirm a distinctive sentence from your main content appears in the rendered HTML.

Keyword research (from the query report)

27.21 † From your query report, find three queries you're getting impressions for that you never deliberately targeted. For each, decide: does it deserve its own page, a section on an existing page, or nothing? Justify each call (connect to Chapters 7 and 8).

27.22 Identify one query where you have decent impressions but sit at position 11–20 (top of page two). Estimate — labeling it as your own estimate — how many extra monthly clicks reaching the top 3 might earn, using the idea (not a fake exact number) that CTR rises steeply as position improves. What does this estimate let you do that raw impressions alone did not?

Optimize / rewrite

27.23 Here is a page-one listing with a poor CTR. Rewrite the title tag and meta description to earn the click, and name what was wrong with the original:

Query it ranks for (pos 4): "why is my furnace short cycling" Current title: "Blog — Rivertown Home Services" Current description: "Rivertown Home Services provides HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services across the Rivertown metro area. Contact us today."

27.24 Take one of your own page-one, low-CTR listings from 27.18 and rewrite its title and meta the same way. State the single before/after change you expect to move the CTR, and how you'll verify it in Search Console (and over what timeframe).

Read the report

27.25 † A Performance report (last 28 days) shows: 90,000 impressions · 2,700 clicks · 3.0% CTR · avg position 12. The top three queries by impressions are non-branded and sit at positions 12–19 with CTRs under 0.5%; the top three by clicks are all the business's own name at position 1–2. In three bullets, state what this site's real situation is, and one thing this data does not tell you. (Treat the numbers as a constructed example.)

27.26 A Links report shows your most-linked page is an old blog post you'd forgotten, and your top linking text (anchor) is your brand name. What are two useful things you learn from this, and one thing this report cannot tell you that a dedicated backlink tool might?

27.27 † Your Page indexing report shows 320 URLs indexed but your site has only ~150 real pages. Name the term for this, the likely causes, and where you'd go to investigate (connect to Chapter 14).

Spot the myth

27.28 "Submit your URL to Search Console and click Request Indexing every day — that's how you get Google to rank you faster." Identify everything wrong with this, and state the honest version.

27.29 † "If a page shows 'Crawled – currently not indexed,' your site is broken and you must fix every one." Identify what's wrong and give the honest version, including when this status is worth acting on.

Ethics & risk judgment

27.30 † A vendor offers to "manage your Search Console" but asks for your Google account password to do it. Explain the correct way to grant them access, why the password request is a red flag, and one privacy point in Search Console's favor compared with user-level analytics (connect to Chapter 28's consent/privacy themes).

Rivertown Strategy File extension

27.31 † Extend the Strategy File. Rivertown's first month of Search Console data showed ~7,600 clicks (almost all branded) against ~190,000 impressions on non-branded, page-two queries earning almost no clicks — plus the crawl/index findings resurfaced from Chapter 14's audit: an accidental noindex still hiding real service pages, index bloat (~1,400 URLs "indexed" against ~120 real pages), and five near-duplicate location pages. Write the one-page "first month findings" memo Tony and Marisa Delgado would take into the next planning meeting: the three highest-priority findings, the one thing to fix this week, and the single most important thing this data does not yet tell them (name the chapter that will).

27.32 Design Rivertown's weekly Search Console review checklist — a concrete, named-report version of the §27.7 ritual tailored to a five-location home-services business (what to check for the branded vs. non-branded split, the five cities, and mobile). State the one metric you'd put at the very top of the weekly log, and why.