Author: Alex Whyles, Head of SEO

In a development that was initially made anonymously, then non-anonymously, Google’s secret sauce, their algorithm signals have been leaked. The full list of API references  has been copied and can be found here: Google Ranking API Signals Leak.

Time to get those rankings

This is not the first time Google has had light cast on its algorithm & ranking methodology, but what is significant about this leak is the amount of information that’s in here as well as the fact that initial suggestions are that it’s completely legit. 

Despite regular denials by Google UX is the undercurrent of search

The set of APIs are essentially rules & considerations that Google will use in order to evaluate a website in order to place it within the Search Engine Results Pages. What’s particularly interesting about these ‘rules’ are the fact that there’s so much detail in there, but also within that detail are areas SEO has known about, guessed, but also been denied by Google repeatedly; domain age & user-centric click signals being a few to mention.

NavBoost (AndUnicorns)

Logically, if you move from a system whereby the world’s information is organised & underpinned by links (votes & how to remain relevant) your next step would be ‘How do I measure & then give the crowd what they’re after?’ 

“NavBoost uses the number of searches for a given keyword to identify trending search demand, the number of clicks on a search result…and long clicks versus short clicks…NavBoost also scores queries for user intent. For example, certain thresholds of attention and clicks on videos or images will trigger video or image features for that query and related, NavBoost-associated queries.”

Source: https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/

To an extent the curtain was drawn back a number of years ago when PageRank (anyone?) was made ‘redundant’ by Google. What we have now is a sort of confirmation of things such as Page Titles being important but the whole ethos of scoring by Google is down to whether or not the people who search find what they are looking for, in other words we’re the markers of our own homework.

Before you get started

There are a few things to note before people get carried away cancelling contracts & browsing the Lamborghini catalogue.

• The leak of API documentation is just that, a list of APIs. So although we now know a list of ‘instructions’ we don’t know how or if these are all processed together.    
• There’s no context to which signals & when they will be used, like  how much of these are used regularly to help push search trends.
• Nor is there any indication of their weighting - specifically if CTR is actually a thing now (See Spark Toro post) it needs to be put into context with “unsquashed” clicks versus “squashed” clicks cookie history & user behaviour are underlying themes here.
• It’s from the Content API Warehouse - how many other warehouses exist & how do they interact
  
  

Many layers, many components

With this leak there’s far too much to read, digest and try to connect together, but the information is likely to be referenced over the next few years. 

However, there are a  few points to disagree or clarify with already, such as ‘Don’t rely on Google’, but when that’s where the majority of people still search it’s quite hard to agree. However, you should diversify where your content lives e.g. Pinterest, YouTube and even Tik Tok. Content is at the very centre of SEO, Google is primarily still a content search engine but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get a little more illustrative with your message and share it with other channels. 

To add to this is how much search will change over the years (this list could be at least as old as August 2023) especially with the impact of AI (and likely backlash) means that the proverbial line in the sand needs to be remembered; SEO has always been a constant changing offering with the same core - build it & build it well.

And finally, ‘SEO is declared dead again’ which came a little earlier this year. Although,  I think this will help the industry & wider marketing folks realise that ‘SEO’ isn’t so much an Eccles cake but closer to the layers of a Mille Feuille.