Leaky pipes: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques attempt to improve the quality and, more often, the quantity of keywords to “game” Google’s algorithms and rise to the top of search results pages (SERPs ). No one but Google knows exactly how these algorithms work, but a recent leak could shed light on some of the Internet’s best-kept secrets.
Google’s recently automated bots committed some confidential documentation on GitHub, which describes how to use the company’s Content Warehouse API. The compromise seems to be a mistake, and Google tried it later undo the leak, but the effort was unsuccessful. The cat is already out of the bag, and SEO experts are poring over the leaked documentation to try to figure out what the Content Warehouse API does.
Erfan Azimi, CEO of SEO firm EA Digital Eagle, was the first to spot Google’s documentation. He later disclosed this to other SEO specialists. The Content Warehouse API appears to be a tool expected for internal use by Google staff.
The errant commit reveals some previously unknown details about how Google’s search engine works and the thousands of attributes used by the Content Warehouse API. Google Search classifies web content using more than 14,000 different attributes. However, there are no details on how much “weight” each attribute carries in search indexing.
Leaked documents too refute some of Google’s previous statements about search, such as user signals focused on clicks that are not taken into account in content indexing. Google said that subdomains are considered separately in rankings, but the Content Warehouse documentation does not support this claim. Some other contradictions include using a sandbox for newer websites, assigning an “authority score” to give a site a higher position in SERPs, and more.
It also uses some questionable metrics in ranking its site. For example, one of the Content Warehouse modules uses Chrome views as a website quality metric. Therefore, sites with more visits from users using Chrome will rank higher, all other factors being equal.
Many SEO experts and professional analysts will likely be studying Google’s Content Warehouse documentation in the coming weeks, despite it being one of the most controversial industries related to internet search. So far, Mountain View has not provided any official statements about the potentially devastating leak. However, rest assured that it has engineers working overtime trying to mitigate the consequences of the leak.
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