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A little light is shining on Google’s Search black box.
A leak of 2,500 internal documents, which Google has confirmed are real, sheds some light on the workings of its search engine—which has long been a mystery for search-engine-optimization experts and businesses—like what data Google collects, how it relies on links and how it views small websites.
“SEO has always been a black box,” said Travis Tallent, vice president of SEO at Brainlabs. “It’s always been experimental and largely driven by testing. This documentation is something we’ve been waiting on for for a very long time.”
On March 13, the leaked documents surfaced on Github, prompting analysis from SEO experts Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SparkToro, and Michael King, CEO of iPullRank.
Some details in the docs cast doubt on the accuracy of Google’s public statements. But listening to Google’s public statements about how its systems work is foolish, Fishkin told ADWEEK.
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated or incomplete information,” a Google spokesperson told ADWEEK. “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.”
Chrome factors in search
Although Google representatives have asserted that Chrome data isn’t utilized in page ranking algorithms, references to Chrome appear in sections detailing how website links are displayed in search. The docs also reveal a module called ‘Chrome in Total.’
