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Xmas Social 2019’s Pub Quiz – Questions & Answers

Posted on19/12/2019

For Cardiff SEO Meet’s Xmas Social 2019 event, I hosted an SEO-themed pub quiz. Just in case anyone was thinking of doing something similar in the future (or for anyone who was just curious how I did it and what questions were involved), I’ve included it all below:

Picture round

For the picture round I included fan art and illustrations of 10 well-known figures in the SEO industry, with an accompanying list of 40 names that people could match them against (I did this to give the non-SEOs a bit of a chance, as I figured that they might not know any of them otherwise – at least this way they could try and guess some).

Cardiff SEO Meet Xmas Social 2019 Pub Quiz Picture Round (all 10 faces)

  1. Rand Fishkin – Sparktoro (& formerly Moz) [pic source]
  2. Marissa Mayer – former CEO of Yahoo! [pic source]
  3. Michael King, a.k.a. iPullRank [pic source]
  4. Neil Patel [pic source] (people kicked off saying “Neil Patel doesn’t have hair!”) ?
  5. Gary Illyes – Google [pic source]
  6. Matt Cutts – former Googler [pic source]
  7. Aleyda Solis [pic source]
  8. Barry Schwartz [pic source]
  9. John Mueller – Google [pic source]
  10. Purna Virji [pic source]

2019 round

For the rest of the rounds, I presented them as multiple choice – that way, even non-SEOs could have a stab at a guess. The bold answer each time is the actual answer.

1) What was the unofficial nickname given to the Google update that rolled out in November, which affected local SEO?

  • Google Chaos
  • Google Bedlam
  • Google Pandemonium
  • Google Havoc

2) Which big tech company lent its Dublin office as the venue for one of Learn Inbound’s monthly meetups earlier this year?

  • LinkedIn
  • Google
  • Facebook
  • Microsoft

3) Which of these was one of the new link attributes introduced by Google in September, which works alongside – and as an alternative to – rel=”nofollow”?

  • rel=”ad”
  • rel=”ppc”
  • rel=”ugc”
  • rel=”content”

4) Back in March, which tag (or tags) did Googler John Mueller admit that Google doesn’t pay attention to any more?

  • The canonical tag
  • The meta robots nosnippet tag
  • hreflang tags
  • The pagination tags, known as rel=”next” & rel=”prev” tags

5) Following Google’s September core algorithm update, who did SISTRIX report as the biggest ‘winner’ of the update, in that they’d made the biggest recovery and biggest gains following the update’s roll-out?

  • Daily Mail
  • Forbes
  • Wikipedia
  • WalesOnline

6) Which famous tech company tweeted: “unfortunately, it’s hard to google [company name] due to tons of ads & SEO” because one of his company websites was ranking terribly in Google?

  • Jeff Bezos of Amazon
  • Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
  • Elon Musk of Tesla
  • Tim Cook of Apple

7) Lyrics website Genius caught Google stealing its content by using an alternating pattern of “curly” and “straight” apostrophes in the text of lyrics, which spelt a word or phrase when translated into Morse code. What word or phrase did it spell?

  • BUSTED
  • REDHANDED
  • GAMEOVER
  • GOTCHA

8) Technical SEO Alexis K Sanders created an SEO advice-giving video game, which can be played by going to technicalseo.guru. What genre of video game did it emulate?

  • RPG (roll-playing game)
  • Platformer
  • First person shooter
  • Stealth

History round

1) What was the original name given to Google by its founders, before they changed it to Google?

  • Page
  • Stanford
  • Seeker
  • Backrub

2) When Googler Matt Cutts famously announced that guest blogging was “done” as a link building tactic, what phrase did he use to accompany it?

  • “Game over, man.”
  • “I’m calling time on this.”
  • “Stick a fork in it.”
  • “Stop, stop – it’s already dead!”

3) Which of these isn’t a nickname for one of Google’s algorithm updates?

  • Google Penguin
  • Google Pigeon
  • Google Possum
  • Google Parrot

4) Which of these isn’t the name of one of Google’s failed social media platforms?

  • Google Click
  • Google Buzz
  • Google Wave
  • Google Plus

5) Thanks to a practice known as “Google-bombing,” what phrase did former U.S. president George W. Bush infamously appear for when typed into Google?

  • “absolute idiot”
  • “complete clown”
  • “miserable failure”
  • “best president ever”

6) TV shows and movies often use fake search engine names, as they may not be allowed to use Google. Which of the following isn’t a fake search engine used in a TV show or movie?

  • Chumhum
  • Finder-Spyder
  • Searchsies
  • PingMe

7) What is the name of Google’s current CEO?

  • Larry Page
  • Sergey Brin
  • Sundar Pichai
  • Marissa Mayer

8) Danny Sullivan – who founded the SEO news website Search Engine Land – now works for which company?

  • Google
  • Bing
  • Yahoo!
  • Trick question (he still runs Search Engine Land)

Numbers round

For this round, the numbers in brackets alongside some of the answers were what the DA or search volume were, so you can compare the answers.

All data recorded the morning of the quiz: Tuesday 17th December 2019

1) Which of the big insurance comparison sites has the highest Domain Authority score?

  • confused.com (73)
  • comparethemarket.com (67)
  • gocompare.com (71)
  • moneysupermarket.com (72)

2) To the nearest million, how many UK average monthly searches does the keyword “google” get in Google? (Google Ads Keyword Planner, UK)

  • 3 million
  • 13 million
  • 30 million
  • 300 million

3) Rounded up or down to the nearest 5, what percentage of searches are conducted using Google in China? (StatCounter Global, Nov 2019)

  • 5%
  • 25%
  • 50%
  • 90%

4) To the nearest 10, how many people attended the first ever brightonSEO event?

  • 0 (less than 5)
  • 30
  • 110
  • 1,540

5) According to the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which of these insurance-related head terms gets the lowest number of average monthly searches in the UK?

  • “car insurance” (550,000)
  • “home insurance” (90,500)
  • “pet insurance” (110,000)
  • “travel insurance” (550,000)

6) Which of these Wales-based company websites has the highest Domain Authority score?
(Quick note: websites listed are the websites being used – e.g. not Admiral Group website!)

  • Admiral (admiral.com) (58)
  • Royal Mint (royalmint.com) (68)
  • PHS (phs.co.uk) (44)
  • Principality Building Society (principality.co.uk) (46)

7) According to the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which of these Donald Trump-related keywords gets the highest number of average monthly searches globally?

  • “donald trump lamp” (20)
  • “donald trump cufflinks” (210)
  • “donald trump comb” (10)
  • “donald trump body pillow” (260)

8) To the nearest 100, how many members have joined the Cardiff SEO Meet group on Meetup.com?

  • 200
  • 400
  • 600
  • 800

Hard round

No multiple choice, each answer worth 2 points

1) Michael King (also known as iPullRank) wrote a blog post for Moz titled “Throw Away Your Form Letters (or Five Principles to Better Outreach Link Building)”. Which well-known video game series did he heavily lean on when making his points throughout the post?

The Legend of Zelda

2) What is Moz’s mascot’s full name?

Roger MozBot

3) In what month and year was the first ever Cardiff SEO Meet held?

May 2016

Tie breakers

None of these were needed in the end, but I had them at-the-ready just in case there was a tie situation.

1) Guess the Page Authority score of meetup.com/Cardiff-SEO-Meet/
(Flip a coin to decide who goes first, whoever is closest wins)

PA 51

2) Not including this Xmas Social and last year’s unofficial Xmas Social, how many Cardiff SEO Meet events have there been to date?
(Flip a coin to decide who goes first, whoever is closest wins)

15

Well done to Sarah, Rob, Paps & Aaron, whose team (“ICE, ICE Baby”) won the prizes.

Major thanks go to SISTRIX, Sitebulb, Screaming Frog and Little Warden, all of whom donated prizes.

Once again, big love to our food & drink vouchers for covering the costs for this one: Ghost Marketing, Red Squirrel Marketing and Lunax Digital. Your support is hugely appreciated.

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