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Depending on your age, you've heard of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Younger people may remember the revelations of Edward Snowden or Wikileaks and Julian Assange. More recently, the Panama Papers made headlines.
All these scandals arose from the inadvertent disclosure of documents.
Last week could represent Google’s Panama Papers.
More than 2,000 pages of internal Google documents reveal how the world's most powerful and secretly protected search engine works.
Has Google been lying for years about how to optimize search? Are these documents even relevant to the recent change in the search algorithm? Or will Google's AI try to completely replace the way people search for information?
Does it matter who writes the content, not just the domain it is on?
Or is it like Apple's Antennagate, when people blamed Apple for the iPhone 4's poor signal reception, but ultimately said, “Verizon is probably to blame.”
We wanted to know more and asked Robert Rose, CMI's chief strategy advisor, for his opinion. Watch this video or read on to find out:
Google was not entirely honest
This week's explosive leak, which published thousands of internal Google documents, is said to provide unprecedented insight into how its search algorithm works, suggesting that the tech giant hasn't been completely truthful about its activities for years.
On Thursday, a Google spokesperson first commented on the matter, telling The Verge: “We want to caution against making inaccurate assumptions about search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information… We have shared extensive information about how search works and the factors our systems consider, while working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.” However, the accuracy of the leaked documents was not discussed in detail.
Rand Fishkin, an OG in the SEO industry, wrote that a source provided 2,500 pages from Google to refute the “lies” spread by Google employees about how the search algorithm works. According to Rand, the documents describe the Google Search API (application programming interface) and the information employees have access to.
Unless you're an SEO geek, the documents' details are more technical than useful. Let me explain. The documents don't confirm that Google does anything specifically for search rankings. But they do highlight the types of data that Google collects — at some point in its history — from sites, users, and other points to gain insights on how to prioritize that information.
In other words, it's like getting all the ingredients to make Coca-Cola – even the secret ones – but not the quantities.
6 things you should know from Google Papers
So what is my opinion?
Well, my first thought was to take the document, run it through Google Gemini and have it tell me what was on the pages.
The response was disappointing. In much more detail, it said that the document seemed to describe the Google Search API and the factors it takes into account.
However, my human review of the analyses from Rand's work reveals these interesting details:
- Long clicks vs. short clicks play a big role in ranking. Did the searcher click on your site and stay there or did they return to Google to search again?
- User data from Google's Chrome browser appears to be one of the most powerful ranking signals. In other words, your search engine ranking pages are almost certainly different from mine.
- Google uses site safelists for sensitive topics like COVID-19, elections and travel. The results are manually redacted, which can cause more problems than it first appears.
- Google employs raters to assess the quality of content and uses their feedback not only as a training dataset but also in its ranking system.
- Things like PageRank and anchor text – where you make sure the hyperlink text is descriptive – are losing influence compared to more user-centric signals.
- Building a brand and generating search demand are more critical than ever to SEO success.
I would be remiss if I didn't take the cold shower that is coming here. Hours after the news broke, some plausibility checks are being carried out. The Search Engine Journal cautions against taking an open mind on the data, as much of it is unverified.
They say the document could simply be the private version of a publicly available API document. In other words, it may not be the secret parts of search, but information for applications that need to communicate with Google. They caution against interpreting anything in this data as actionable SEO advice.
I think the Google Papers will end up more like Apple's Antennagate than the Pentagon Papers. In the next few days, maybe by the time you see this video, we'll know if the information on Google Search resembles the original secret recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken or just the ingredients of New Coke – interesting, but not very tasty.
Don't miss our live discussion with Rand Fishkin later this month. Follow Content Marketing Institute on LinkedIn for more details.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
