How The Biggest Google Leak In History Can Help You Steal Business From Your Competitors

Don’t you just love a bit of scandal?

We’ve witnessed some astonishing leaks of super-private information over the years.

Edward Snowden and the CIA Spying Wikileaks & the Panama Papers to name a couple. ?

And, If you’re of a certain vintage, you might remember some of the most shocking lies and deceit in recent history.

Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme. Bill Clinton and THAT famous lie about what he “didn’t” do with his intern, Monica.

Well move over Ed, Bill & Bernie, Google’s got you beat.

Because, earlier this year, a number of secret Google documents were inadvertently leaked online. Thousands of them in fact, exposing over 14,000 features and ranking signals. They revealed what makes Google’s search algorithms tick - and it appears Google may have been “misleading” us, or in some cases telling downright porkies about how they rank websites. ?

Today, we dig into what these leaked documents reveal about ranking insights, and more importantly how you can weaponize them to give your website a big push on Google search.

Let’s go…!

About the Google Leak…

The accidental leak happened in the summer, when thousands of leaked API documents were shared with a well-known marketer called Rand Fishkin. ?

Now, Google are veiled at the best of times, so a leak of this magnitude is pretty much unprecedented.

Now the cat is let out of the bag, there’s a treasure trove of gold-dust for experienced SEO’s to consider when plotting their SEO strategies. It’s maybe more useful than the “advice” we get from Google itself. Because the revelations clearly prove some common SEO “myths” to be true, and some Google "pointers" to be bordering on poppycock.

Now, remember, there are several thousands of pages to slurp up with this leak.

But, rather than trolling through hundreds of pages of technical data that look like the below, here are some super-quick headline takeaways for you and your SEO teams…

Let’s go!

“EEAT” and “Authorship” is real and Google CAN identify how authentic and impactive authors are.

For a while now, I’ve been advising on the importance of implementing “Expertise, Experience, Authorship & Trust” (EEAT) signals on your websites. Google preaching on trust - you have to love the irony!

Having credible authors linked with your websites, and implementing other trust signals seems to give it a boost. In the leaked docs, it’s clear that Google does know how to identify the credibility of an author.

Oh, and it appears EEAT is especially profound for news and scientific content – if you operate within a business that is medical/surgery based for example, implementing EEAT successfully alone could have significant positive impact on your search rankings. ???

By the way, EEAT was just one of the key strategies identified in the Top 2024 Digital Marketing Strategies report penned during the tail end of 2023.

The report has aged rather well, and if you had acted on just a few of the insights last year, like embracing SGE (now AI Overviews) your website would have been ideally placed to slurp up maximum traffic from the new AI search results that have landed while ruling the wider digital landscape.

DM me if you would like to flick through it, as it has a lot of content that could help your business generate a lot more traffic, leads and sales. It’s free, too!

Back to the Google leaks then…

Get That Backlink Strategy Right

Yeah, yeah, backlinks from really good sources are important. Even your cat knows.

But, an interesting reveal is that quality links from content/pages that are updated regularly appear to have more gravitas than links from static pages.

It’s probably why, from experience, attaining links from quality Digital PR tends to be more valuable than other seemingly equal link profiles. Because, Digital PR tends to get links from news and magazine sites that publish and update information frequently. ?

The leak also confirms toxic backlinks are most definitely a thing and tracked by Google – be careful when obtaining links, and stay away from nefarious link building “opportunities” because they can harm your rankings. If you’re buying seemingly cheap links from dodgy sorts, your website rankings might end up in a bit of bother once Google finds them.

This Is New And Quite A Revelation - Click Behaviour

We’ve known for a while that Google considers the click volumes your website pages receive. More clicks, better.

But another interesting find is that how those clicks BEHAVE appears to be a solid ranking factor.

Something it has openly denied in the past – in fact the words “made up crap” were used by a Google analyst in response to whether click data was used as a ranking factor.

Turns out, those of us who suspected click behaviour impacts SERPS were right all along.

Google actually distinguishes bad and good clicks, and rates them based on what the user does post clicking.

The most valuable is the click that doesn’t return to Google after clicking. Because, the user is deemed to have found what they were looking for.

So how can you turn this to your advantage?

Make your site sticky, your content compelling and engaging. Offer clear CTA’s so the visitor knows exactly what to do next. Work on reducing bounce rate.

This is good practice anyway, but suddenly has gotten a lot more important.

Google Uses Chrome Data

SEO’s will know of John Mueller, who in a Google Hangout denied that Google employs data from its own Chrome data to analyse click data.

Well, the leaks mention “chrome_trans_clicks”

So, turns out it does, and also finds popular links within a site by scouring its chrome user data. Good to know.

Site Wide Authority Does Exist

Despite Google often downplaying that it considers site-authority metrics to influence search engine placements, these metrics are clearly mentioned in the leaked docs.

Site authority measures authority of a website for specific subjects – it includes factors like content relevance, length and quality. Plus, user engagement and link profiles. Again, stop buying cheap spammy links, and optimise your site to enhance user engagements.

And, in case you haven’t already clocked it, stop taking Google at face value…

Chard Scores – The Whole Might Be More Than The Sum Of Parts

Google’s stance for a while has been that it ranks specific pages, not websites.

Porkie incoming.

From the leaked docs, it appears while each page is analysed for variable measures of quality, overall site authority very much matters, and may even supersede individual page quality.

While the quality of the individual content and other on-page factors of a specific page does impact it’s rank - so does the overall quality of content across the site as a whole. This includes things like content depth and user engagement, as is suggested by the inclusion of “chard scores”.

What’s this mean? Basically, it’s important to maintain a high quality across your website. Individual pages will rank better if the overall cohesion of SEO is of a high standard throughout. And a page will rank better if the “topic” is part of the overall theme of your website.

Subdomains Vs Subfolders – What’s Easier To Rank?

The leaks put this debate to bed once and for all.

Even though Google (John Mueller) has previously advocated that you can use either:

Oh, stop it, John. Your nose will grow.

The leaks reveal if you host a blog or shop on a sub-domain, you’d need to put in a lot of effort to build authority separately to the main domain.

Should Your Approach To SEO Change Based On The Leaks?

Look, this is a monster clump of documents. We’ve barely scratched the surface here, bringing you only some key actionable takeaways while giving Google a couple of digs along the way.

Whether you should change your approach depends on how you’re handling SEO now.

Google looks to match quality content to user searches, looking to promote sites that offer the highest pedigree of user experience.

So, if your SEO strategy involves actions that will likely enhance the above, you’ll probably do well. Quality content, flawless website technicals, and genuine backlinks are a pretty good start.

Feel You Want More…?

There’s nothing quite so exciting as transforming a clients digital performance – watching their traffic, leads, and ultimately sales go through the roof.

Pardon the confidence, but I know exactly how.

Proof? For just one of my clients (a Fiedlity company), I was asked to transform their digital marketing to spearhead growth. In 3.5 years, and with a fantastic team, we managed to grow bookings in a ruthlessly competitive industry by 10 times. In a run of 44 months of consecutive bookings growth. And the exciting thing? It’s very duplicatable.

So, if you feel you’d like more from the world of digital marketing… Lets talk.

Until then, I’m Tukshad Engineer – thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it.