With more 90% of the global search engine market, Google's search algorithm acts as a gatekeeper for most people who want to find answers on the web.
For the first time, a massive internal document leak provides a glimpse into how Search works — and there are inaccuracies between the documents and what Google has publicly stated about Search in the past.
The leak of 2,500 documents was discovered by SEO practitioner and EA founder Eagle Digital Erfan Azimi earlier this month, confirmed by SEO experts Rand Fishkin AND Mike King on Monday and publicly confirmed by Google on Wednesday.
Azim said he had no “financial motive” for leaking the information. He stated that his main motive was to expose the truth.
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Although Google spokespeople have denied Over the years that clicks have factored into rankings, documents show that Google appears to have kept track of clicks, down to how long users spend on a website.
Google also seems to consider subdomains separately from domains, which directly Opposed past statements.
And another inaccuracy, Google has said that it doesn't consider a website's age in ranking or push new websites, but the documents show that it does.
Fishkin identified the main leakage points as:
- Google cares about brand recognition and favors big, powerful brands over small, independent ones – even if smaller brands HAVE more expertise.
- Strong brands can rank well on Google, even with lower EEAT, or experience, expertise, authority and credibility.
“Google no longer rewards scrappy, smart, SEO-savvy operators who know all the right tricks,” Fishkin wrote. “They reward established brands, search-measurable forms of popularity, and established domains that searchers already know and click on.”
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The leak may have occurred when Google accidentally published internal documents on Microsoft-owned GitHub in March, according to Fishkin.
“We will guard against making incorrect assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” Google spokesman Davis Thompson. said in a statement on Wednesday threshold. “We've shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors our systems weigh, while also working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”
Google made public changes to Search earlier this month, including a new one AI overviews section at the top of the search results. The move has yielded incorrect answers that have since gone viral on social media, including a post telling users to make pizza sauce with glue.