One thing right now: Google Search’s algorithm hasn’t been leaked, and SEO experts don’t suddenly have all the answers. But the information leaked this week, a collection of thousands of internal Google documents, is still huge. It’s an unprecedented glimpse into the normally closely guarded inner workings of Google.
Perhaps the most remarkable revelation of the 2,500 documents is that they suggest that Google representatives have misled the public in the past when discussing how the Internet’s largest gatekeeper evaluates and ranks content on its search engine.
The way Google ranks content is a black box: websites depend on search traffic to survive, and many will go to great lengths (and expense) to beat the competition and climb to the top of the results. A better ranking means more website visits, which means more money. As a result, website operators hang on to every word that Google publishes and every social media post by employees working on the search. His word is taken as gospel, which in turn reaches everyone who uses Google to find things.
Over the years, Google spokespeople have repeatedly denied that user clicks factor into ranking websites, for example, but the leaked documents take note of various types of clicks users make and indicate that they feed into search ranking pages. Testimony in the US Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit was previously disclosed a ranking factor called Navboost which uses search engine clicks to increase search content.
“To me, the bigger goal is that even more of Google’s public statements about what they collect and how their search engine works have strong evidence against it,” said Rand Fishkin, a veteran of the search industry. search engine optimization (SEO). The Verge via email.
The leak first spread after SEO experts fish fish i Mike King released some of the contents of the leaked documents earlier this week along with accompanying analysis. Leaked API documents contain repositories full of information and data definitions that Google collects, some of which can inform how web pages are ranked in search. Google initially dodged questions about the authenticity of the leaked documents before confirming their veracity on Wednesday.
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” Google spokesman Davis Thompson told The Verge in an email Wednesday. “We have shared extensive information about how search works and the types of factors that weigh our systems, while working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”
There is no indication in the docs about how the different attributes are weighted, for example. It’s also possible that some of the attributes named in the docs, such as an identifier for “small personal sites” or a downgrade for product reviews, for example, were implemented at some point, but have since been phased out. They may also never have been used to rank sites.
“We don’t necessarily know how [the factors named] are being used, apart from the different descriptions of them. But even though they’re a little sparse, there’s a lot of information for us,” says King. “What are the aspects that we need to think about more specifically when we’re building websites or optimizing websites?”
The suggestion that the world’s largest search platform doesn’t base its ranking of search results on how users interact with content seems absurd. But repeated denials, carefully worded company responses, and industry publications that unquestioningly carry these claims have made it a contentious topic of debate among SEO marketers.
Another important point made by Fishkin and King relates to how Google can use Chrome data in its search rankings. Representatives of Google Search they said they don’t use anything from Chrome for classification, but leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, shows “chrome_trans_clicks” as information about which links from a domain appear below the main web page in search results. Fishkin interprets this to mean that Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which should be included in the sitelinks feature.”
There are more than 14,000 attributes mentioned in the documents, and researchers will be digging for weeks for clues contained within the pages. There is mention of “Twiddlers”, or ranking tweaks rolled out outside of major system updates, which raise or lower content based on certain criteria. Elements of the web pages are mentioned, such as who the author is, as well as measures of the “authority” of the web sites. Fishkin points out that there are many things that are not well represented in the documents, such as information about AI-generated search results.
So what does all this mean for everyone outside of the SEO industry? On the one hand, you’d expect anyone running a website to read about this leak and try to make sense of it. A lot of SEO is throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, and publishers, e-commerce companies, and businesses will likely design various experiments to try to test some of what is suggested in the docs. I imagine that as this happens, websites might start to look, feel, or read a little differently, all while these industries try to make sense of this new but still vague wave of information.
“Journalists and publishers of SEO and Google Search information need to stop uncritically repeating Google’s public statements and take a much tougher, adversarial view of the search giant’s representatives,” says Fishkin. “When posts repeat Google’s claims as fact, they help Google create a story that is only useful to the company and not to professionals, users or the public.”
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