Google Leak...But What Does It Mean?!?

If you follow even a single person with SEO in their job description or LinkedIn skills, you might have caught wind this week that an anonymous source (an alleged ex-Googler) released a very long document with more than 14,000 +? likely ranking factors that Google uses in its current algorithms.?

I’d bet that hundreds of thousands of man-hours have been collectively spent around the world attempting to parse the data, extract insights, and figure out how to make this actionable.?

If you want to get up to speed on the release and the insights from it, I don’t recommend you try to parse through the thousands of lines of API that were released in Git Hub, but instead, here are a few articles on this that I think all sum it up nicely:

1. Rand Fishkin gives a really nice high-level summary that I think is great for SEOs & non-SEOs alike: https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/ ?

1. Michael King, who released this along with Rand and is a well-respected Technical SEO, at about the same time released his thoughts, which are a little more geared towards SEOs.? https://ipullrank.com/google-algo-leak ?

1. Search Engine Land gives a really full breakdown of the conversation so far: https://searchengineland.com/unpacking-googles-massive-search-documentation-leak-442716 ?

After the release, the industry EXPLODED, and there have been many subsequent arguments, debates, insights, and attempts to make all this actionable.?

Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve pulled so far from all the conversations:

1. Click Through Rate Matters - Don’t skimp on metadata, schema markup, or featured images.

1. Link Building Is Still Important?- Google has always differentiated “types” of links, but now we know they are probably watching the traffic that clicks and travels through those links to your website.

1. Domain Authority is Real…they just don’t call it that - Google said they don’t have anything like Domain Authority as a metric, but it turns out that wasn't super-duper truthy :)?

1. Clicks Matter?- In addition to getting traffic to your site, Google is paying attention to whether you are keeping that traffic engaged or not.?

1. Wait, How Are They Doing That? - Google publicly stated at some point they don’t use Chrome Data to influence the Algorithm..turns out that’s not true either.?

1. Brand New Sites Get Sandboxed - Google also said this wasn’t true, but in fact, brand new websites are “sandboxed” based on lack of trust signals and age.?

1. Demotions?- Google’s got some demotions in their algorithm for sites that aren’t meeting their idea of a best practice. The ones that stood out to me were “NavDemotion,” “Location Demotions,” and “Product Review Demotions”?

1. Link Velocity - If you are stressed about negative SEO attacks with spammy links, it appears Google has a lot of metrics that will help them identify that you are being targeted and essentially ignore those links.?

1. Redirect Strategy?- Google is keeping at least 20 copies of every version of a page of content that’s been on the index. So if you delete it and re-direct it to a less relevant or irrelevant page, the link equity and prior value of that page won’t flow.?

1. Site-Wide Quality Matters - Google appears to be associating a domain-wide ChardScore that predicts the quality of your website and content. Aka, one great page aint gonna cut it.

1. NavBoost?- In addition to demoting crappy navigation, having a clean & clear site navigation overall is pretty critical to your overall Google Ranking.?

1. Relevancy?- One of Google’s most important ranking factors is semantic relevancy, which means they want to deliver users to wholistic, complete answers.?

My High-Level Thoughts:?

Honestly, for a lot of this, we’re breathing a sigh of relief at V9 on our SEO practices and tactics. Volume Nine has been in the SEO game for almost 20 years, and I’ll be honest, the first third of that, we algorithm-chased. Then, through the years of Panda / Penguin / Hummingbird, we realized that trying to chase ranking factors was a losing proposition. So, we decided to make the leap to focus on building great brands, helping companies connect with their customers in meaningful ways, and developing great, high-quality content and websites.?

These ranking factors certainly help us provide better insights and tactics to our clients, but if you aren’t an SEO and are trying to figure out what to do with all of this, my hot take is not to overstress. There are a lot of blog posts, articles, videos, rants, arguments, opinions, etc., and frankly, it’s really overwhelming.?

So, my honest recommendation is the following:

1. If you aren’t an SEO and are worried about this, have them look at your website with you. You don’t need to worry about if you’re getting an extra boost from NavBoost, but they should be able to tell you pretty quickly if your Navigation needs some TLC.?

1. Focus on a great user experience. Is your website clear about who you are, what you offer, and why your audience should care? Do you answer their questions? Do you provide high-quality text, images, and videos??

1. Think about where you would build up your brand and get traffic online if Google didn’t exist. This will quickly lead you down a great path to get brand mentions, referrals, and links from the right kinds of websites.?

If you are in SEO, what are some other interesting nuggets you got from the leak this week or other sources people should check out??