Massive Google Leak: Internal Documents Reveal Hidden Truths About Search Algorithm

Back in March, an automated bot called yoshi-code-bot posted a number of documents from Google’s internal Content API Warehouse. Those documents were then shared with Rand Fishkin, the co-founder of SparkToro, who has now put together a rather detailed article about the nearly 2,500 pages that describe how Google Search ranks pages and websites on the internet.

You might be wondering why this is a big deal and why you should care. These files show us what matters to Google when ranking websites and web pages. Including telling us a lot of things that Google never talks about. These documents essentially tell you how the internet is indexed. Search Engine Land believes this will be one of the biggest stories in the history of SEO and Google Search.

So, what’s inside this leak? Well, it tells us that this information is current as of March 2024. It also has 2,596 modules that are represented in the API documentation, with 14,014 attributes. However, the documentation does not specify how any of the ranking features are weighted; they exist. It also includes demotions that a site can receive, which include a link that doesn’t match the target site, SERP signals indicating user dissatisfaction, product reviews, location, exact match domains, and porn.

These documents essentially tell us Google has been lying for years

A lot of things that Google tells SEOs (search engine optimization), appears to have been false, according to this leak. Another SEO expert, Mike King, also published his findings of the documents and stated that “‘Lied’ is harsh, but it’s the only accurate word to use here”. King continued by stating, “While I don’t necessarily fault Google’s public representatives for protecting their proprietary information, I do take issue with their efforts to actively discredit people in the marketing, tech, and journalism worlds who have presented reproducible discoveries.”

One main way that Google is lying to the public is by saying that it does not use Chrome data to rank pages. However, in this leak, Chrome is specifically mentioned in the sections about how websites appear in Search.

Google hasn’t yet said a word about this leak. But you can rest assured that Google will be doing everything in its power to get these taken down. I wouldn’t be surprised if this article is removed in the next couple of days.