🚨 Breaking News: Massive Google Documents Leak Exposes Inner Workings of Search Algorithms! 🚨

I have been working in the CMS industry since 1999. My first flexible CMS was developed in 2000 and turned into a product. Curiously, WordPress has many concepts that I developed years before. I also developed a website that provided a platform for anyone to create their own digital newspaper.

One big concern during the development was SEO, and I'm proud to say that our platform was very efficient. A piece of news published on our news platform was usually indexed by Google in 10 minutes or less (we made the test).

However, discovering how to do it was always a challenge because of a lack of transparency from Google.

So, the recent leaks of thousands of internal Google documents have revealed crucial insights into how Google Search ranks content. Shared by an automated bot and analyzed by industry experts, these documents shed light on the complexity and depth of Google's ranking systems.

Some insights

• Ranking Features: Google's ranking algorithm involves 2,596 modules and 14,014 attributes. However, the weight of these features remains unknown. It is too complex!
• Links Still Matter: Despite claims to the contrary, link diversity and relevance remain critical ranking factors. PageRank is still in use. These two metrics were announced as deprecated by Google years ago to prevent link farms.
• Clicks Influence Rankings: User interactions, such as clicks and time spent on pages, significantly impact rankings. Systems like NavBoost confirm the importance of user behavior. Because of this, the article usually has two or three useless paragraphs in the beginning to force the user to scroll and demonstrate "interest in the content."
• Brand Importance: Building a notable, well-recognized brand is crucial for improving organic search rankings, but and the small and new blogs?
• Chrome Data Utilization: Despite previous denials, Google uses data from its Chrome browser to inform rankings, in other words, the company spies what we do.
• Content Freshness and Authority: The freshness and authority of content, including byline dates and page titles, are significant. Google's site authority and domain registration information also play roles. If this is true, why does the search return so many trash and commercial websites?
• Small Sites and Demotions: Google can demote content based on various factors, such as link mismatches, SERP dissatisfaction, and even being a small personal site. If you are an expert in a subject, the only way to be recognized as it is to publish on a big website. It is the dead of small blogs.

Impact on the SEO Industry

Some experts of the SEO community are saying that these revelations confirm long-standing suspicions about Google's practices and misdirections. The insights validate the importance of high-quality, user-focused content and the necessity of robust link-building strategies. Moreover, the documentation highlights the need for SEOs to continually adapt and refine their tactics in response to Google's evolving algorithms.

However, if you are someone interested in publishing your ideas, distributing your knowledge, or just publishing about a specific subject without knowledge about SEO, your content will probably never be seen.

The concept of "user-focused" is absolutely relative. I receive a lot of trash on my Discovery screen (who has an Android phone probably noticed it), and it is an automatic Google Search result, supposedly based on my preferences.

Influence on Internet Business & Transparency

Google's control over search rankings profoundly impacts online businesses. The beauty is that the leaked documents show that Google's algorithms are designed to favor well-established brands and content that effectively engages users. This influence means businesses must prioritize building strong, recognizable brands and focus on creating valuable, engaging content to succeed in search rankings.

However, Google fails in terms of transparency and fails to explain the "game rules" clearly.

We have heard that the reason is "industry secret" or "patents," but with an undeniable influence over business and what we see when we access the Internet, I believe that it is time for more transparency over this criteria.

The main problem is the quality of the response. I read about a business that lost about 80% of its visits in the last two months because of the last Google algorithm change, and the website was a specialist in its subject. On the other hand, Reddit and Quorum registered a big increase in visits for the same reasons.

Google has decided that a forum with "honest opinions" about a subject is better than a website published by a specialist!

What do you think about it?

Personally, I didn't like it.

#SEO #GoogleLeak #DigitalMarketing #SearchEngineOptimization #OnlineBusiness #dataanalytics