On Friday, we revealed how a huge data leak occurred at Google relating to how the company’s search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking features were calculated.
After reviewing these monumental findings, in this blog we’re summarising the biggest takeaways that may influence your SEO strategy moving forward.
The leaked data included thousands of documents, with details on the data that Google collects and processes when crawling websites, insights into ranking algorithms, system functions and content evaluation. Much of the content of this leaked documentation seems to contradict a number of statements that Google representatives have made over the years.
What’s been revealed?
Google has previously made claims that it doesn’t use domain authority as a ranking metric, however, the leaked documentation reveals that Google does exactly this, with a metric called “siteAuthority”.
Similarly, Google representatives have said that the number of clicks through to a website don’t have any effect on rankings. What the leaks show is that there appears to be a whole system that uses click data to change search results. This system is called “NavBoost”.
Google has long denied using a ‘sandbox’, a system that limits new sites from ranking highly on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). The documentation has revealed that this does, in fact, exist, and Google routinely places new sites in a ‘sandbox’ for a period of time. The documents state that “an attribute called hostAge is used specifically “to sandbox fresh spam in serving time.”
When asked back in January 2024, Google’s John Mueller confirmed that he doesn’t think that Google Chrome data is used for ranking. However, according to the leaked docs, Google Chrome user data is being used for search-related purposes.
While these internal documents have revealed a number of new findings about SEO and contradictions from Google, many elements of the documents confirm established SEO techniques. These include:
• The number and diversity of backlinks (links on other websites pointing to your website) is as important as ever
• Including target keywords in title tags is a necessity
• Having expert and authoritative authors for your content helps satisfy Google’s Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) guidelines.
What does this mean for SEO?
Perhaps the biggest lesson to learn from this leak is to take any further claims made by Google with a pinch of salt. Although it makes sense that Google wouldn’t want to divulge every aspect of its ranking algorithm, these revelations contradict several claims its representatives have made in the past.
The leaked documents have validated many long-held SEO beliefs, which means that as seasoned SEOs, we should continue to experiment and see what works rather blindly following Google’s advice.
At Engage Web, our SEO specialists use their knowledge and expertise to create the best SEO techniques for our trusted clients. If you’re looking for help to boost your rankings on Google, reach out to our team now.
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