Google Search SEO document leak reveals how company curates internet

https://gizmodo.com/google-search-seo-leak-reveal-gatekeeps-internet-1851508410

by anigbrowl • 2 years ago

56 27 2 years ago

nsmog767• 2 years ago

I have worked in SEO for 10+ years and didn't find this very useful. Yes, it validates a bunch of theories I have. No, it doesn't change how I will do anything.

sixhobbits• 2 years ago

Yeah people are acting like everyone needs to scramble to take advantage of this, but it's mainly not actionable to improve your own rankings.

If you're a black hat then I guess making your clickfarms spend more time on your site might be useful now, but if you are playing by the book then continuing to make good content that people want to read remains the most important factor.

mateus1• 2 years ago

This is not actionable, but certainly demoralizing for those of us working for years in SEO.

butler14• 2 years ago

That’s the same with a lot of hype in SEO circles. It’s the usual loud voices making a big deal out of it, but when you get down to the actual practicalities, not much changes.

Not least because very little of it is conclusive in terms of what Google do and don’t use, weightings, etc

It’s most valuable because it shows up a lot of googles public statements where they’ve said they don’t even consider certain things, with this implying they very definitely do in some capacity

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

Some of these factors include Google’s determination of a website’s authority on a given subject

I don't see how this can possibly be a heavily-weighted factor, given how so many of the top results for many searches are obvious content-farm garbage.

kccqzy• 2 years ago

It's funny. Wikipedia is consistently the top results for me, with only narrow exceptions like health and disease topics. Does Google really consider Wikipedia to be authority here? Maybe the topic itself doesn't have any natural authority.

micromacrofoot• 2 years ago

Some content farms are considered more authoritative than others (seriously, can't make this shit up)

6gvONxR4sf7o• 2 years ago

It might also be a sparse signal. Like when it has a good authoritative result, it counts positively, but it rarely has a good authoritative match?

mk_chan• 2 years ago

Yes this seems likely because important things like government websites and banks seem to always come up.

r721• 2 years ago

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40496967

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40498076

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40505310

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40510125

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40518016

retskrad2• 2 years ago

You literally have to force people NOT to use Google Search. That’s how much people like Google. For that reason, the vast majority of population on earth have voted and they have made Google the custodian of the internet. I don’t understand the criticism that Google has ruined the internet. It’s a company with shareholders who demand y/o/ growth. Their job is to be make money by providing a useful service in the process. A service which is extremely expensive to run. If people don’t want Google to have this much power of the internet, then you need to campaign for consumers to stop using it. The odds of that succeeding is zero. That means the ball is in Google’s court and they can do whatever they please.

dotnet00• 2 years ago

This is circular reasoning. You can't convince people to not use it if you don't criticize it, and of course the odds of that succeeding are zero if you don't even try.

Also, you literally have to force people to not use google search because it's the near universal default. The majority of the population with internet access does not care about it being google in particular as long as the engine works.

pmontra• 2 years ago

Many things have been universal defaults, then a truly better product appeared or an inferior one was inflicted to people and they could not dodge it. The default changed.

The first Google was an example of a truly better product compared to Yahoo, Altavista, etc. For browsers, the first Firefox vs IE6. Both with only word of mouth. Or the first Chrome vs Firefox, at least for JS speed. Both word of mouth and advertising.

Examples of inferior products that people could not dodge: many Microsoft corporate products. The latest one is probably Teams. Maybe Windows 11 too. Of course Windows 8.

retskrad2• 2 years ago

If every smartphone and desktop OS right now summoned a pop up screen telling everyone on earth what they want their search engine to be, the loss in market share would be a rounding error for Google. If that’s not fair and square win for a company, I don’t know what is.

The only way for Google to lose market share is if Apple changed the default search engine in iOS and redirected people to Bing with an UI that has the same UI as Google search. At that point, people who aren’t tech savvy will think it’s just Google and business is usual for them.

encoderer• 2 years ago

You’re definitely right about that. I don’t think it’s about defaults in this case like it was for Microsoft.

This time Google should get clapped for their ad auction shenanigans.

pompino• 2 years ago

If people don’t want Google to have this much power of the internet, then you need to campaign for consumers to stop using it.

We need some politicians with a backbone to clamp down on their bad behavior. Nobody is going to cry over Google being put under heavier regulations. They're a spyware vendor as far as I am concerned.

In the 2000's, any self-respecting nerd would have been repulsed by them (we used to fight when websites stored cookies or logged our IPs, remember that? :) ). But they slow-cooked the frog.

rgrieselhuber5• 2 years ago

This has been making waves in the SEO world. I was always more surprised that people honestly believed Google wasn't manipulating results. In the political realm it was treated as tinfoil hat territory.

iamacyborg2• 2 years ago

How do you rank pages without “manipulating” the ranking?

rgrieselhuber5• 2 years ago

Well, yes, but there was a presumption of fairness (insert definition here) in pure ranking of content based on quality, backlinks, etc. that sort of thing. Personally I never believed it but it was a pervading belief.

jeltz• 2 years ago

Maybe I am part of a different SEO world but everyone I know assumed this to be the case.

rgrieselhuber5• 2 years ago

Yeah just depends on who you’re talking to. There are various cliques out there.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40496967

and more

RecycledEle• 2 years ago

Why does Google not have a form where anyone can submit a complaint that a top search result is a garbage site?

If the top search result is full of falsehoods, it should be easy to report and get it moved off the top few pages.

Google Search SEO document leak reveals how company curates internet

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