If you remember, I wrote a Knol on the “Blogging Idol” competition, where the test case was “How long will it take for my Knol to reach the top 10 in Google search results“.

The reason I did this test case was to see whether Google was showing favoritism for content written in it’s own system.

So, here are the results, and a preliminary analysis.

The Impressive Results

1. It took just 35 minutes for Google to index my Knol
2. It took about the same amount of time for Google to index my blog post about it!
3. At T0+27.5 hours, the Knol was #20 on Google, and the blog post was #22 for search expression: the Blogging Idol
4. At the same time, the Knol was #10 on Google and the blog post was #11 for “the Blogging Idol”
5. 10 hours later (no, I wasn’t obsessive compulsive about it …), my Knol had gone up to #16, and my blog post was up to #20.

Then It All Went Belly-Up …

1. As I write, my blog post is still at #20 and #11, respectively (for the 2 different searches)
2. The Knol, on the other hand has been dropping quite steadily, and is now at #88 and #35, respectively !!

My Analysis

1. Firstly, Google does seem to be indexing Knols (and Blogs for that matter), very quickly.
2. Obviously http://knol.google.com has a many more pages and links than my blog
3. How on earth did http://knol.google.com get to Alexa Rank 2 ?!?!   A..HAH – that’s easy. Who wants to guess? Which site is ranked #2 on Alexa? That’s right, Google. By the way, who knows what is #1 on Alexa?
4. Anyway, back to my poor Knol. Why did it go into free fall, whereas my blog post did not? Why did it go into free fall, while How to Read Russian in 75 Minutes did not?
5. So, using some of my SEO knowledge, I’ll hazard a few ideas:
   1. My Knol is about a subject that lots of sites (mainly blogs) are writing about. These sites, including my own blog, are adding more relevant content all the time.
   2. I didn’t figure in the fact that “American Idol” is also alive and kicking, and there are thousands of blogs about that. Same thing here – lots of new “relevant” content.
   3. On the other hand, my Blogging Idol Knol is static – the most it has received is a couple of links. But content-wise, I’m not doing anything with it. True, there have been about 500-600 pages added to Google Knol since I wrote mine, but none of them are relevant.
   4. How to Read Russian in 75 Minutes is also a pretty static subject. There aren’t 10′s or more pages being written every day about reading Russian. So, relative to the rest of the Web, this Knol isn’t continually “under attack” by lots of new content in the same niche, using the keywords “read Russian”.
   5. I’ll hazard another guess: the URL structure of Knol focuses first and foremost on the Author. That means that if I write loads and loads of Knols, they will all start with knol.google.com/k/debi-zylbermann/…
      The subject is much less important. Now, if you agree that a site built using a Silo structure (see this 9-minute video for a very good explanation) is more effective in the search engines than one that is not, it becomes clear: in Knol, all the content on a particular subject is divided up into author-related silos. So, if an author doesn’t continue writing lots of Knols, his or her Knols are not going to move up the search results.

What do you think? Any other ideas to explain how my Knol fell flat on it’s face?

Have you written any Knols yet, and have you checked their Google search position?

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Well, let’s see.

I’ve written a Knol about the “Blogging Idol” competition.

I pulished it 5 minutes ago. That’s 18:55 Israel time on Friday the 25th of July.

Let’s see how long it takes my Knol to get to the top of the Google search engine results.

OK?

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This is the 2nd new thing I learnt at SEETest 2008, which made it into an excellent conference. I’m sure that quite a few of you already know this technique, but as I wrote in my post about attending International conferences, I got left behind …

The subject was “Creating Real-World Test Cases using Extension to Noun and Verb Usage”. Vipul adds an extension to the Noun and Verb usage technique which was first coined by Elizabeth Hendrickson. Vipul gave a talk on this subject at CONQUEST 2007, and since he had a bit of time left at the end of his Q-Patterns tutorial, he used it to explain this technique.

The goals of this technique are to:

• Write effective test cases
• Reduce the impact of bad and missing requirements
• Raise important questions about software behavior
• Bring more uniformity into the coverage even when different testers write test cases

In Object Oriented design, nouns are classes, and verbs are methods

In Testing,

• nouns are test objects,
• verbs maniputlate the test objects, i.e. they are the tests you want to apply,
• and adverbs and adjectives affect the test objects, i.e. add more test cases.

Great. Now what do I do with this? I combine the nouns, verbs and adverbs/adjectives into test cases.

Stage 1: Extract the nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives.

Stage 2: Combine the nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. Like this example of what an ATM system should do: 

There are lots of test cases that you can write if you continue combining the nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives

So why do we need Vipul’s extension?

Very often, the requirements aren’t detailed enough, for example: ”the given application allows users to open supported files”.

I’m sure that none of you have ever seen a requirement that looks like this!!

What is the extension ?

• Extract the nouns and verbs
• Use “5W1H” (who, what, why, where, when, how, how many, how far …) to extract adjectives, adverbs
• Use pre and post conditions to extract more nouns and verbs
• Enumerate properties of every noun
• Break down these properties to base elements
• Use boundary values, equivalence classes on the base elements
• Write tests for individual properties
• Combine operations (verbs) to write scenario based tests  

I was going to continue with completing the example, but that would have made this post SOOO LOONNG.

So, for full details of the technique and a complete example, go to Vipul’s CONQUEST presentation.

Just one word of warning about this technique: It can be used to easily develop 1000′s of Test Cases, but that is not the idea. The idea is to use the technique to develop 1000′s of IDEAS, then to prioritize them, and then to decide which ideas to develop test cases for.

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I usually tell myself that if I come away from a conference having learnt one new thing, then it was a successful conference. If I come away having learnt one new thing per day, then it was a really excellent conference.

Well, I must admit that I wasn’t expecting to get my 2-days’ worth of new stuff at the first tutorial, but I did.

The idea behind Q-patterns (a.k.a. Questioning Patterns) is based on the idea behind Design patterns, i.e. REUSE.

In this case, the reuse is of Test Cases. Q-patterns provide:

• A means to communicate experience
• Aid in writing test cases
• A mechanism for test case reuse
• Aid in reviewing specifications and design

How do Q-patterns work?

Q-patterns are a method of questioning the scenario. They are a set of interrelated questions, grouped together, that relate to some aspect of user or software requirements, and provide various alternatives to arrive at a solution.

Basically, if you can ask a set of questions about a particular topic in context X, you can reuse these questions for the same topic in context Y.

Let’s use an example: A combo box.

This small element of software has a number of attributes that are irrespective of the application that the combo box is used in. If a test engineer knows what types of questions to ask about a combo box in one application (in order to get a full understanding of how it works), s/he can reuse those questions with respect to a combo box in another application.

What sort of questions can you ask about a combo box?

Usage: Data Source:

• is the combo-box populated with values by default?
• what are the default values?
• where does the combo-box get its values from?
• what happens if the data source fails?

Usage: Data addition/deletion/modification

• How are new values added? Deleted?
• Can values be modified? How?
• Where are newly added values displayed? Beginning, end or based on some type of sort?
• Is it a single or multi select? If multiple, how is the select done?

User Interace:

• Is the combo box wide enough to display the widest element? If not, is scrolling possible?
• How is selection displayed?
• Does the box drop down to reveal all entries? Or only some? How do you scroll vertically?
• Can the box drop down and selections be made by using the keyboard? the mouse?

Internationalization

• Does the box accept and display etended ASCII characters?
• Does the box accept and display multi-byte characters?
• Does the box accept right-to-left scripts (e.g. Hebrew, Arabic)?

etc. etc. etc.

You get the picture.

These are a set of generic questions that need to have answers for any implementation of a combo box, and as such, they are reusable, and can be identified as part of the “Combo-box” Q-pattern.

Exploratory Testing and Q-Patterns

According to Vipul, one testing technique that can benefit in particular from Q-patterns is exploratory testing.

How come? Exploratory testing is based on a tester’s experience. Using Q-patterns allows a tester to overcome the following challenges:

• exploratory testing is an individual’s exercise
  • difficulty to pass on the knowledge gained
  • depends on the individual’s skills
• exploratory testing involves designing tests and executing them at the same time
  • q-patterns can be created as you go along
  • q-patterns list various ways that things could work, and suggests various alternatives

Some of the Problems with Q-Patterns

There are a number of problems with Q-patterns. For example, you can easily end up with a huge set of questions (some of which may not be terribly useful) for a minute widget in the software. The chances are that for a large complex system, the list of questions will be unweildy, and there may be many duplicate questions in various Q-patterns.

Another possible issue is – who is going to write all these Q-patterns? It’s all very well to identify a lot of generic bits and pieces, but is it worth writing the Q-patterns for them? A bit like reusable design and code – the first person designing or developing with reuse in mind doesn’t actually benefit (and it’s often more complicated to have reuse in mind from scratch), it’s those who reuse the design, code or tests who benefit.

Vipul would like to have different companies work together to prepare a repository of Q-patterns, for all to reuse. Sort of like a “QWikipedia”  (DebiZ – I just coined that term!), but that just raises more issues: where would this repository reside? And what about each company’s IP?

And last, but by no means least, how does one ensure that test engineers working with Q-patterns don’t fall into the trap of stilted thinking?

To Summarize

I could go on quite a bit longer, but I don’t intend to explain a 4-hour tutorial in a sinlge blog post!

Suffice to say that I came out of the tutorial with an understanding of Q-patterns, and some of their strengths and weaknesses.

If you have any thoughts about Q-patterns, as I’ve explained them, I’d be interested to hear your comments.

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Well, Blogging is also a combination of a science and an art, and to make it work, you need a lot of experience, just like exploratory testing.

So, welcome to the “Blogging Idol” competition, a 1-month competition where ”small” blogs (under 1000 subscribers on the 1st of July, 2008 ) are encouraged to increase their subscriber count. Since my blog is new, I only have 1 subscriber so far. I really need your help to get that up into the hundreds !

The competition is also aimed at improving bloggers’ experience – each blogger has to write a weekly report, including all the techniques that they have used to improve their subscriber count during the previous week! Everyone in the competition gets to see that list, and try it out on their own blog to see how it helps. Now, that isn’t quite pair-wise testing, more like “hundred-wise” testing!

Whatever we call it, I like the idea, and Debi’Z Blog has joined the competition.

So, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help me win this, by subscribing to my blog. It’s really easy – all you need to do is click on the right hand corner of the blog, either on “subscribe in a reader” (for that you need to have or set up an RSS reader, I use Netvibes, by the way, but you can use any others), or on “Subscribe to Debi’Z blog by Email“. What this does is that each time I add another post, you receive it by email.

Of course, it would be really cool if you actually commented on my posts, so that my blog would become a center for discussion on QA, Testing, SEO, work and life in general….

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