3 Insights and Practical Advice from the Google Data Leak
The digital marketing community (especially the geeky ones) have been up in arms about a massive data leak that shows some of the workings of the Google Algorithm. The cynic in me thinks the data leak may have been a deliberate attempt by Google to change the narrative around the company; many marketers online were criticising Google after mixed outcomes from using AI Overviews, which was released a few weeks ago in the US (with plans to roll out globally).
Whatever the source of the leak and the reasons behind it, it does appear that Google has misled (or lied to) the search community about a number of ranking factors. Rather than going through the documents, I have detailed what I think are the 3 most significant takeaways from the leak:
Click Data & User Metrics—While Google has long claimed that clicks and dwell time (how long someone engages with your website/webpage) are not ranking factors, our own data has led us to believe that they are. The data leak, which involved a system called NavBoost, shows that Google likely does use click data to establish the relevance of a search result.
The main advice I would give to business owners about handling this is to continue (or start) focusing on things like meta titles and description tags and create high-quality content that fulfils the needs of your audience.
Google appears to use badClicks, goodClicks, lastLongestClicks and unsquashedClicks to measure great content and user experiences.
Links Matter—I thought that PageRank, Google’s measure of a page’s authority, was disestablished many years ago. However, it seems that PageRank is still very much alive and well.
In effect, that means that high-quality, relevant, and diverse links from third-party websites are still fundamental to good search engine rankings (Links can be seen as a ‘vote’ for your website. The more high-quality websites that vote for your website, the higher Google perceives the popularity of your website).
My recommendation is to develop a strategy for obtaining links organically. This could involve unique data, white papers, commenting on newsworthy topics, or anything else that stimulates a website to link to yours.
Focus on brand building – According to Rand Fishkin, one of the first to be sent the leak, brand matters more than most:
“If there was one universal piece of advice I had for marketers seeking to broadly improve their organic search rankings and traffic, it would be: ‘Build a notable, popular, well-recognized brand in your space, outside of Google search.’”
This is something that I would advise to do, regardless of what we have recently learned. In my view, as we move to AI in search, brand building is going to become more and more important to gain traction through digital marketing. Having a recognisable, quotable, brand will impact both your search visibility and the likelihood of being featured in answers from LLMs like ChatGPT.
Much of this confirms what we already thought and helps validate our marketing and business model. It also reinforces that we should always take guidance from companies like Google with a pinch of salt and test things using our own data and experience.
On 29th May, a Google spokesperson released the following statement:
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information. We’ve shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors that our systems weigh, while also working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”
Whatever the truth, the best advice I can offer is to ensure that your website contains content that people want to consume in a way that is easy and intuitive for them to consume.
