The secrets of the Google algorithm

Last May, the world of technology and marketing began to revolutionize. Rumors grew and frenetic activity multiplied in offices around the world. The cause? The leak of 2,500 internal Google documents that revealed details about the data collected by the company and its possible use in the search ranking algorithm. This confidential information, related to the Content Warehouse API, has exposed secrets about how Google handles and prioritizes data in its systems, causing a significant stir among SEO and digital marketing specialists.
IN THIS ARTICLE

Leaked information from Google Search API

The fact is that a collection of 2,500 internal Google documents, containing 14,014 attributes, with details about the data the company collects, has been leaked. Specifically, information related to the Content Warehouse API of the Google search engine. That is, valuable data that details the fundamentals that Google stores, some of which could be used in its search ranking algorithm! Not to drive the marketing and technology sector crazy

What is a document with Google API content?

It is inevitable to ask ourselves: What is it? For what do you use it? So, we bring you Google spokesperson Davis Thompson with his response: “We've shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors our systems weigh.” 

To put it in simple words, it is a kind of library that stores different books and employees, in this way, can see what information is available, go to review that data and also know how to get it; generating the same vocabulary. 

 What's interesting is that the leaked material suggests that Google collects and potentially uses data that company representatives have said does not contribute to the ranking of web pages in Google Search, such as clicks, Chrome user data, and more; and it seems that they do. In addition to showing that the modules are related to components of YouTube, Assistant, Books, video search, links, web documents, tracking infrastructure, an internal calendar system and the People API.

What secrets does it reveal about the SEO algorithm?

In 14,014 attributes tangled in 2,500 documents, it is almost impossible to study all of them and rescue only a few. Furthermore, when talking about “algorithm” it cannot be assimilated as a single thing, but rather it is a series of microservices where many functions are pre-processed and available at runtime to compose the SERP. 

 In any case, some specialists like “Rand Fishkin” and “Mike King” have taken on the job, offering us not only a translation, but also a summary.

SEO revelations about the Google API

SiteAuthority: This affirms that Google does have a general domain authority. We don't know specifically how this measure is calculated or used, but we now definitely know that it exists and is used in the Glue and NavBoost ranking system. NavBoost is a system that uses click-based measures to improve, downgrade, or otherwise strengthen a ranking in web search, while Glue is associated with other universal search results. 

In this way, it is evident that Google has ways to filter out the clicks they don't want, count them in their classification systems, and include those they do want. In turn, it measures the duration of these (i.e. pogo-sticking: when a person clicks on a result and then quickly clicks the back button, dissatisfied with the answer they found) and impressions. 

Click sequence: The document outlines the features around how Google creates Sitelinks and shows a ranking called “topUrl,” which is a list of the top urls with the highest Chrome score. In this way, it uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and thus determines the most popular/important URLs of a site, which go into the calculation of which ones to include in the Sitelinks function.

 

Importance of links:

  • The level of indexing affects the value of the link: the most important content, which is accessed and updated periodically, is stored in flash memory. The least important, in solid state drives, and finally in standard hard drives. In other words, the higher the level, the more valuable the link will be and therefore, it is also important to obtain rankings from high ranking pages (Backlinks).
  • Signs of spam link speed: Google does have the ability to measure this, and could be used to identify when a site is spamming and nullify a negative SEO attack.
  • Updating links: Google saves and reviews the last 20 versions of pages, which, if you want to delete the previous history, you already have an idea of how many times you should update it.
 
Homepage: The PageRank of the home page is used as a proxy for new pages until they capture their own PageRank. It seems that the same thing happens with the Site Authority.
 
Trust in links through home pages: Google decides how to value a link based on how much they trust the landing page. Which, you have to focus on the quality and relevance of the links instead of the quantity.
 
Titles and searches: Confirms that Google actively assesses how well the page title matches the query. Therefore, keywords continue to be essential.
 
Relevance to dates: This focuses on the constant search for new content, which is why Google makes a big attempt to associate dates with pages. Among which are:
 
  • BylineDate: This is the date explicitly set on the page.
  • SyntacticDate: Date extracted from URL or title.
  • SemanticDate: which is derived from the content of the page.
 
Sites with videos: If more than 50% of the site's pages have videos, the site is considered video-centric and will be treated differently. So, we have to be careful with the content we publish.
 
White lists: There are certain themes that seem to be outside of all the aspects mentioned above and above all, which are important in Google's reputation. Some are: travel, politics and current events such as “Covid”, “Fakenews”, etc. 

Our conclusions to take into account about the Google algorithm

Google does not want to reveal the secret of its search algorithm and whenever it has done so, it has done so under an “official” statement, but these documents, together with the statements in the United States Department of Justice, have changed the rules of the game. , providing more clarity on the signals that Google takes into account when classifying websites. In any case, over the years, things have changed and will continue to do so by introducing, for example, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence.

For that, I think it is interesting to understand what SEO is about, how we can improve our online positioning, but not only by focusing on Google. Here our conclusions.

  • Build a well-defined brand: that becomes popular, that arouses interest, that attracts the user, that generates acceptance in our target client, not in Google. Let it be the consequence.
  • The user matters more than the optimization: If a site has high demand and therefore clicks on its content, the number of links, keywords, originality, anchor texts, etc. does not matter. Google still recognizes the usefulness.
  • At first, the results will be low: Google rewards established brands and measurable popularity, before new sites.
 

In this way, we can extrapolate that the three points are related, leading us to the following questions: Does SEO and positioning my site matter? It matters. Is it the most important thing? Of course not. Will I give all my efforts? Well it depends on your objectives.

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