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With over 90% market share of global search engines, Google's search algorithm acts as a gatekeeper for the majority of people seeking answers on the Internet.
For the first time, a massive internal document leak offers a glimpse into how search works — and there are inaccuracies between the documents and what Google has publicly stated about search in the past.
The 2,500-document leak was uncovered earlier this month by SEO practitioner and EA Eagle Digital founder Erfan Azimi, confirmed by SEO experts Rand Fishkin and Mike King on Monday, and publicly confirmed by Google on Wednesday.
Azimi said he had “no financial motives” for sharing the information. His main motive was to bring the truth to light, he explained.
Related topics: Google could charge for AI-powered search features
Although Google spokespeople have denied over the years that clicks are taken into account in rankings, the documents show that Google appears to have logged all clicks, including the time users spend on a website.
Google also seems to view subdomains separately from domains, which directly contradicts previous statements.
And another inaccuracy: Google has said that it does not consider a site's age when ranking and does not push new sites down, but the documents show that it does.
Fishkin summarized the key findings from the leak as follows:
- Google values brand awareness and favors large, influential brands over small, independent brands – even if smaller brands have more expertise.
- Strong brands can achieve a good ranking on Google even with lower EEAT (experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness).
“Google no longer rewards aggressive, clever, SEO-savvy operators who know all the right tricks,” Fishkin wrote. “They reward established brands, search-measurable forms of popularity, and established domains that searchers already know and click on.”
Related: Site traffic declining? Here are the big AI changes Google made to its search tool
According to Fishkin, the leak may have occurred when Google accidentally published the internal documents on Microsoft's own GitHub in March.
“We want to caution against making inaccurate assumptions about search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” Google spokesperson Davis Thompson said in a statement to The Verge on Wednesday. “We've shared extensive information about how search works and the factors our systems consider, while working to protect the integrity of our results from tampering.”
Google made publicly available changes to search earlier this month, including a new AI overview section at the top of search results. The move has led to inaccurate answers that have since gone viral on social media, including a post that asked users to make pizza sauce with glue.
Related: Google's new AI search results are already hallucinogenic – telling users to eat rocks and make pizza sauce with glue
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