Internal Google documents released on GitHub reveal how search engine algorithms work.
The documents have unveiled secrets about how Google ranks content in its search results and the important factors that affect website ranking.
Table of Contents
What Actually Happened?
According to the news, Google accidentally published over 2,500 pages of documents on GitHub on March 27. These were removed on May 7 but were successfully indexed by a third party known as yoshi-code-bot. These documents were shared with Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SparkToro, earlier this month.
Why Should Digital Marketers Care?
According to SEO specialists who have examined the stolen paper, several of Google’s earlier claims counter its data. For instance, the paper makes the case for domain authority, which Google has always downplayed, affecting search results.
Some SEO experts have analyzed the leaked documents, contradicting Google’s previous statements about content history, linking, and clicks. Here’s what digital marketers should know about the leaked documents:
1. Google can demote your content due to the following reasons:
- A link doesn’t match the target site
- SERP signals indicate user dissatisfaction
- Product reviews
- Location
- Exact match domains
- Porn
2. Google keeps the score of the changes made in content
3. Link diversity and relevance are the keys to content
4. Google strictly considers PageRank for the website’s homepage
5. Shorter content wins the race, while longer content gets lost in the lot
6. Google stores content author information. Ensure to include the author’s info on your site
7. Clicks are important. Google uses several metrics, such as unsquashedClicks, lastLongestClicks, goodClicks, and badClicks
8. Google uses site Authority to check how well you’re able to rank in SERPs
9. Google inspects small sites with smallPersonalSite feature to boost or demote their ranking
What Does the Google Leaked Document Include?
Here’s what the Google Leaked Document includes:
Ranking Features: 14,014 attributes from 2,596 modules are provided in the API description.
Weighting: The documents did not mention how they are weighted. They just mentioned the existence of ranking features.
Twiddlers: These are reordering features that “may modify the information retrieval score of a document or alter the ranking of a document.”
Change History: Google maintains a copy of every version of any page it has ever indexed. This means that every modification made to a page can be “remembered” by Google. However, when evaluating links, Google only considers the past 20 changes to a URL.
Linking: As per the document, link diversity and relevancy are still important.
PageRank: PageRank is still a vital component of Google’s ranking system. Every document on a website is evaluated based on its homepage’s PageRank.
Clicks Matter: Maintaining excellent content and user experiences is essential to ranking highly. Google employs a number of metrics, such as unsquashedClicks, lastLongestClicks, goodClicks, and badClicks.
Additionally, longer documents might be deleted, but shorter content would receive a uniqueness score (0 to 512).
NavBoost: NavBoost re-ranks based on user click behavior, a fact Google has often denied. However, a court case revealed they heavily rely on click data, specifically from Chrome and likely Android devices.
The leak shows that related topics, links, and clicks indicate a site quality score. Google’s Panda algorithm and its versions are mentioned, suggesting they use referring domains and click ratios to determine score demotions.
Author Information: Google links authors to entities in the knowledge graph and uses this in Google News. The documents contain some author info, but nothing confirms they’re used in rankings.
What Does Google Say About the Document Leak?
Google has confirmed the authenticity of 2,500 leaked internal documents, providing unseen insight into the data the company collects and may use in its search ranking algorithm.
___
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out of context, outdated or incomplete information. We’ve shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors that our systems weigh while also working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”
– Davis Thompson, Google spokesperson, told The Verge
___
Top Advice to Consider from the Document
- Invest in a well-designed site with intuitive architecture to optimize for NavBoost.
- Remove or block irrelevant pages on SEO-important sites; establish and optimize your target topic first.
- Optimize headings and paragraphs around queries for clear and succinct answers.
- Write more content to earn impressions and clicks; consistent topic expansion leads to success.
- Update content regularly with unique information, new images, and videos to score high on Google’s “effort calculations” metric.
- Consistent, high-quality content and frequent publishing are rewarded with higher site/page quality scores.
- Value impression growth as it indicates good quality NSR data for the entire website.
- Focus on entities and salience scores; top entity identification is crucial.
- Remove poorly performing pages with bad user metrics and no links to improve site-wide scores.
Final Words
The recent leak of Google documents provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Google’s search ranking algorithms, revealing key factors that influence website rankings.
Digital marketers should pay close attention to these insights, as they highlight the importance of elements like link diversity, content updates, and user behavior.
By understanding and leveraging these factors, businesses can enhance their SEO strategies and improve their search rankings.
