Tips for Getting Your Quiz to the Front Page

So you want your quiz to make it to the front page, eh? It isn't as difficult as you think. This page will give you a quick run-down of how to get your quiz to the front page.

• 1. Use Correct Spelling/Grammar

  We get constant complaints about quizzes with poor spelling and grammar. People tend to ignore these quizzes, which makes it harder for them to reach the front page.

• 2. Write a Good Title

  Your quiz's title should say exactly what the quiz is about and draw people to want to take it, so be sure to think of a good one!

• 3. Add a Picture to Your Quiz

  Selecting a great picture for your quiz really helps. Quizzes with pictures are promoted more heavily around GoToQuiz and attract more attention.

• 4. Make Your Quiz Compelling

  Quizzes based on an original idea or something that is popular tend to generate interest. If your quiz is clever or topical, people will want to take it and share it with their friends.

• 5. Avoid Text-Speak and All-CAPS

  We penalize quizzes that use text-speak, like "how r u?" While fine for messaging, this style of writing makes quizzes seem very amateurish. Typing with caps lock on is considered rude, like you are shouting. Too much makes a quiz look bad.

• 6. Don't Add Junk Text

  Some people just fill in mandatory text boxes with random junk like "dkfjlsdk flksdjfsdkfoesfje." We penalize for that! Why put in the effort to make a quiz only to vandalize it with ugly random text? We also penalize for excessive punctuation, like putting too many !!!!! or ????? in your quiz. It just looks bad.

  Additionally, GoToQuiz uses some of the paragraph text to find similar quizzes to link to each other. If your paragraphs are relevant, you'll get other quizzes linking to yours.

• 7. Avoid Offensive Content

  We automatically scan quizzes for possible offensive content. Quizzes with swear words, rude messages, or sexual language are penalized. Depending on the severity, your quiz may be immediately deleted! Please respect our content rules.

• 8. Share Your Quiz!

  Post your link on a message board, on Facebook, on Tumblr. Send it in an email to friends. Doing this will boost up the popularity, helping you reach the front page.

A Note on the penalties mentioned in #5, #6, and #7. These apply more strongly to your quiz title and first descriptive paragraph, as these are used to display your quiz on the front page. But they do apply also to all the text fields of your quiz. Think of a good title and write all your text cleanly, avoiding the problem areas described above, and you are on your way.

The Scoring Formula

The exact formula for promoting quizzes to the front page is a secret. However, there are a few things we'll reveal. One obviously important factor is the number of people who take your quiz. We only count each person once, so taking your quiz a bunch of times does nothing to help. Another factor is getting a good quiz rating. Again, multiple rates from the same person aren't counted. Getting back to tip #8 above, we detect if your quiz has been shared on other sites. This tells us you are actually promoting your quiz, or others are sharing it, and you get credit for that.

We have two filters. One is a lameness filter that detects some of the stuff above (the caps lock, text-speak, punctuation problems, etc.). If the lameness filter finds a lot of issues with your quiz, it is not impossible that it will still make the front page. But the penalties are applied and it becomes more difficult. Excessive lameness means your quiz can never be promoted. If instead the lameness filter reports no problems, you actually get a bonus!

The other filter checks for the offensive stuff. Too much and you quiz will not be promoted, and may be deleted if it's bad enough.

Monitoring Your Quiz

After you've finished your quiz, you can log back into it any time to check the stats. You can see how many people have taken it, which gives a pretty good indication of how it is doing. A Quiz typically needs around 100 or so people having taken it before it becomes likely to reach the front page.

If you follow the newest quiz list, you'll notice that some quizzes are in a larger font than others. These are the ones that are becoming likely to get promoted. We increase the font size as they get more popular! So you may want to check that out, too, and see how your quiz is doing there.

Best of luck! Create an awesome quiz!