The Massive Google Document Leak: Did You Miss Out the SEO Secrets?
In this edition, we dive into the recently leaked Google documents that have sent shockwaves through the SEO community.
It was the beginning of the new year 2023 when I was really struggling hard to reach out to international clients and rank my website on top of the SERPs. And then came the Yandex leak on January 27 that shook the entire SEO community around the globe.
Being a tech enthusiast, I decided to dive deeper into leaked source codes of the world’s fourth-largest search engine with the hope of getting some actionable insights into the ranking factors. .
How did this leak happen with a company like Google?
On March 13, 2024, a huge cache of internal Google documents was leaked online. This included emails, memos, and strategy documents dating back to 2018, totaling over 2500 pages with 2596 modules and 14014 attributes.
The incident was noticed & explored by Rand Fishkin, Co-founder of SparkToro who revealed that Google’s internal Content API Warehouse had been accidentally released on GitHub by an automated bot called Yoshi-code-bot on March 27th which was removed on May 7th. But it was too late as this was indexed by a third-party service that brought this major incident before the world
The leaked document offers critical insights into how you can revamp your SEO strategy to get desired outcomes for your website or content rankings. So, I just thought to express what I have learned from this incident.
How Does it Work? (The Insights)
Let me come straight to the point and unveil some critical insights into Google’s mysterious approach toward ranking content and factors responsible for it.
The first thing I always felt is we don’t need to pay too much heed to Google’s official announcements and rather focus on our target audience.
The next big thing is that website owners must focus on building good quality links as these are still significant to ranking your content. However, we were always told by Google folks that links don’t matter anymore when it comes to ranking content. But surprisingly, it’s not the truth.
Optimizing meta descriptions was always considered an old-school SEO obsession. However, I agree that it is not a direct ranking factor but I have witnessed many instances where polished meta descriptions have helped website owners improve their visibility.
SEO experts have always speculated about the Google “sandbox”. Despite Google’s strong denial, there is a metric in Google named “hostAge” that symbolizes a sandbox used by Google. This simply means that some established and trusted websites gain ranking faster on Google.
The data collected by Chrome is also used as a ranking factor. However, I wasn’t surprised to know this as I always speculated this. Google has always been adamant about this.
As far as I know, Google has always been adamant that domain authority doesn’t play any role in ranking a website or assessing its quality. This proved to be Google’s obfuscation as the internal documents explicitly showcase that it is a major factor in ranking websites.
I also speculated that Google uses “click data” as a ranking factor but Google professionals have always denied this. Despite these dubious statements, thanks to Rand Fishkin who experimented on this and surprisingly found that clicks do account for SERP rankings. Not only this, but the “types” of clicks also account for rankings.
What Does This Mean for You?
As a marketer, this leak is a reminder to stay ahead of the game. Here are some things you can do:
Keep Your Content Fresh: Make sure your website has new and relevant content to keep Google interested.
Focus on Quality: Make sure your content is good and provides value to your audience.
Diversify Your Strategy: Don't rely on just one way to promote your website. Try different things to see what works best.
Monitor Your Rankings: Keep an eye on how your website is doing in search engine rankings and adjust your strategy accordingly.
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