Is Google losing its credibility? Hundreds of pages of internal company documents have been leaked online
The American company has confirmed that its real internal Content Warehouse API documents have been leaked online. The 2,500-page document details the search engine’s mechanisms for collecting data on user behavior and the rules for issuing content to their requests, The Verge writes.
What happened?
The first to report the leak were search engine optimization experts Rand Fishkin and Mike King. They found many differences from what Google had publicly reported about the data from Chrome and the authors of the publication. They also each published their analysis of the documents and their content. They say that Google is collecting and potentially using data that, according to official information, allegedly plays no role in search rankings.
Experts also found several other interesting facts. One of them concerns the importance of clicks, as well as different types of clicks (good, bad, long) for web page rankings. For example, during the US antitrust case against Google, representatives of the company admitted that they take click metrics into account as a factor in search rankings, and the documents provided more details about these systems.
The developers themselves disagree with the accusations and urge not to trust all the disclosed data.
“We warn against making incorrect assumptions about search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information”,– said Google spokesman Davis Thompson.
According to him, the company “shared a lot of information about how search works and the types of factors that are taken into account in the systems, and is also working to protect results from manipulation.”
However, it is unclear which of the leaked documents are used to rank search content – the information may be outdated, used solely for training purposes, or specifically for search optimization. The documents also do not disclose what weight different elements have in the ranking.
In general, the published information caused outrage among search engine optimization, marketing, and publishing specialists. Thus, it turned out that SEO promotion may not work at all for small sites and companies that have not yet formed a strong brand.
We hope the largest and most authoritative search engine on the planet will withstand and overcome all the problems that have been covering it like an avalanche lately. Do you trust Google?
