Wednesday, February 03, 2010<\/p>\n
\n Thanks to all of you who took our \n You have moved your site to a new domain name. For users and search engines, the preferred way \n Your server is going to be moved and unavailable for a day. What should you do? \n Your website is not in the index five days after you’ve put it online; what should you do? \n You need to remove 192 PDF files from the \n You have a country-coded domain name called example.es. To associate your site with Spain, you \n Great job to everyone who took the quiz and tested their know-how! And last but certainly not 40\/40:<\/b><\/p>\n 39\/40:<\/b><\/p>\n 38\/40:<\/b><\/p>\n
\n webmaster quiz<\/a>
\n and waited patiently to see how well you did! Today, we’re pleased to present the
\n Webmaster Quiz answers<\/a>!
\n We hope this quiz has provided some clarity on common issues users ask about in the Webmaster
\n Help Forum. We’ll go over a few of the questions and answers here, but if some of the answers
\n lead you to ask more questions, we encourage you to
\n continue the discussion in the forum<\/a>!\n<\/p>\n
\n to permanently redirect traffic is:
\n Correct answer:<\/b> a) 301<\/code> redirect
\n Explanation:<\/b> A
\n 301<\/code> redirect<\/a>
\n is preferred because it tells search engines, “Ok, this is the new domain I want you to show to
\n users from now on,” as opposed to something like a 302<\/code> redirect, which tells search
\n engines, “Hey, this is only a temporary redirect—so, uh, I might change the URL soon, okay?”
\n In addition to implementing a 301<\/code> redirect, the
\n Change of Address feature<\/a>
\n in Webmaster Tools can help Google find your new site.\n<\/p>\n
\n Correct answer:<\/b> c) Return “Network Unavailable (503<\/code>)” with a helpful message
\n to all requests
\n Explanation:<\/b>
\n Maybe not as commonly known to webmasters, but very useful if your site is down! This tells
\n crawlers to come back later, rather than crawling and indexing your “Down for maintenance”
\n pages when you respond with 200<\/code> rather than 503<\/code>. Check out the Help
\n Center to learn more about
\n HTTP status codes<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n
\n Correct answer:<\/b> b) Continue working on the site
\n Explanation:<\/b> This one is a bit tricky. There could be a number of reasons why your site
\n is not indexed. For example, a site’s robots.txt file may contain a rule to inadvertently
\n block crawlers from searching its contents. But the main take-away from this question is that
\n if your site is pretty new, it may just be a matter of time before it gets indexed. You should
\n continue to focus on improving your site for your users.\n<\/p>\n\/private-files\/<\/code> folder which have gotten
\n indexed. What’s the fastest way to do this?
\n Correct answer:<\/b> d) Disallow the folder in robots.txt and request removal of the whole
\n folder in Webmaster Tools.
\n Explanation:<\/b> Before removing a directory that you don’t want indexed, you need to include
\n the Disallow<\/code> rule in your robots.txt file to tell search bots not to crawl it
\n anymore.\n<\/p>\n
\n need to:
\n Correct answer:<\/b>
\n c) None of this is necessary. Google should already associate a domain ending in .es with
\n Spain.
\n Explanation:<\/b> Some country-coded domains may overlap with international ones, like .tv
\n —which could also be a site from Tuvalu. But these sort of cases are rare and if they do
\n arise, don’t be shy to seek out help on the
\n forum<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n
\n least, kudos to the top scorers! Congratulations on a quiz well done!\n<\/p>\n\n
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