IBDP Computer Science B2.4 Programming algorithms SL Paper 2 - New Syllabus

(a) Award [2 max]

Any two suitable methods, for example:

• Ask users to give tour ratings.
• Incorporate quizzes and stories.
• Encourage customer feedback.
• Post customer-generated content or images.
• Use gamification and rewards.
• Add booking forms so users can book tours directly.
• Incorporate live chat for real-time customer support.
• Include interactive maps showing tour locations and details.
• Implement social media links.
• Offer virtual tours with 360-degree views.
• Create user accounts to enable personalized experiences.
• Add a newsletter signup.

(b) Award [2 max]

• Use content, code and images that the developers have created themselves rather than copying material from external sources.
• If material is taken from an external source, seek permission from the copyright owner before using it.
• If content is distributed under a Creative Commons licence, follow the conditions of the licence, such as giving credit to the original creator or respecting restrictions on commercial use.

(c) Award [1 max]

One suitable metric is the number of visitors to the website.

Other acceptable metrics include time taken to load the site, time spent on the site, quality and quantity of backlinks, trustworthiness of linking domains, content quality, mobile-friendliness, click-through rate, conversion rate, or a proprietary algorithm such as PageRank or HITS.

(d) Award [2 max]

Any two suitable white hat SEO techniques, for example:

• Use relevant keywords throughout the website.
• Publish relevant and high-quality content.
• Obtain high-quality backlinks.
• Optimize the website for mobile devices.
• Use meta tags correctly.
• Improve the user experience and website navigation.
• Use user-generated content.
• Maintain a secure and well-hosted website.
• Improve the structure of the website.
• Use guest blogging or link baiting appropriately.

(e) Award [4 max]

• Sustainability: white hat SEO follows search-engine guidelines, helping the website achieve long-term ranking success.
• Credibility and trust: ethical practices can build trust with users and search engines, which can contribute to higher rankings.
• Avoidance of penalties: white hat techniques avoid the penalties associated with manipulative black hat techniques.
• Better user experience: focusing on useful content, navigation and usability can improve user retention as well as search rankings.
• Positive reputation: ethical SEO can improve the company’s online reputation and encourage organic promotion through social sharing.
• Adherence to web standards: following appropriate web standards can improve accessibility and indexing.
• Future-proofing: white hat methods are less likely to be negatively affected by future changes to search-engine algorithms.

(f) Award [3 max]

Technical assumptions: developers may make assumptions about efficiency, cost, indexing depth and query response time. These assumptions can affect how deeply the search engine indexes websites and how quickly it returns results.

Developers may also assume that backlinks indicate the importance of a webpage. This can cause highly linked pages to be ranked more prominently while relevant pages with fewer links may be overlooked.

User-centric assumptions: assumptions about what users consider useful or relevant can introduce bias into the search algorithm. Different search engines may therefore produce different results depending on their design goals, such as prioritizing accuracy, speed or particular types of content.

Static assumptions about web content and user behaviour may also reduce effectiveness because the web and user expectations continually change.