The leak of 2500 pages of internal Google documents reveals the search algorithms. The authors of the leak believe that Google has not been completely honest about this for many years
Rand Fishkin from SparkToro, who has worked in SEO for over a decade, statesthat the source shared 2,500 pages of documents with him in the hope that publicizing the leak would help counteract «the lies» Google’s about the search algorithm. The documents describe Google’s search API and contain other information that is available to employees.
Based on the publication, Google made the data publicly available, probably by accident, via GitHub starting on March 27. The explanatory documents were removed on May 7. However, since they were indexed by a third-party service, a copy remains available even after the removal.
The data shared by Fishkin is technical and more understandable for SEO professionals. The content of the leak also doesn’t necessarily prove that Google uses the specific data and signals it mentions to rank searches. Rather, the leak outlines what data Google collects on the web and offers indirect clues to SEO experts about what Google is paying attention to.
Some of the information in the documents contradicts public statements made by Google representatives. Fishkin said that the company does not deny the veracity of the leak, but that an employee asked him to change some of the wording in the post regarding how the event was characterized.
Google’s secretive search algorithm has spawned an entire industry of marketers who closely follow Google’s public guidelines. The common, often unsavory tactic has led to a common narrative that Google’s search results are deteriorating, overrun with garbage that sites create to get seen.
One example is whether Google Chrome data is even used to rank sites. Google representatives have repeatedly said that they do not use Chrome data to rank pages, but Chrome is specifically mentioned in the sections on how sites appear in Search.
Another question that arises is what role EEAT plays in the rankings. EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness, and is a Google metric used to assess the quality of search results. Google representatives have previously stated that EEAT is not a ranking factor. Fishkin notes that he did not find many references to EEAT in the documents.
The documents describe in detail how Google collects author data from a page and determines whether the person on the page is the author. Some of the documents say that this field was «primarily designed and customized for news articles… but is also populated for other content (e.g., academic articles)». While this does not confirm that authorship explicitly affects rankings, it does show that Google is at least tracking this attribute. Google representatives have previously insisted that author information — is something that site owners should do for readers, not for Google, as it does not affect rankings.
Source: The Verge
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