10 Google Ranking Factors From Leaked Google Search Documentation

Disclaimer: This post leverages insights from recently disclosed Google search documentation to explore ranking factors. However, to ensure the information remains current and accurate, we recommend consulting Google's official resources.

A major leak of internal Google Search ranking documentation has created a stir in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) community. This leak, revealing over 14,000 potential ranking features, offers a rare glimpse into Google's secretive search ranking system.

Key Metrics from the Leak:

PageRank Variants: Google has multiple types of PageRank algorithms, including a deprecated one called pageRank_NS (Nearest Seed PageRank), used for understanding documents. Another well-known type is ToolBarPageRank.

Business Model Identification: Google can identify different types of websites like news sites, Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites, personal blogs, e-commerce sites, and video sites. The reason for specifically filtering personal blogs remains unclear.

Important Algorithm Components: Some critical parts of Google’s algorithm include navBoost, NSR, and chardScores.

Site-Wide Authority Metric: Google uses metrics that measure the overall authority of a site, including signals from Chrome browser traffic.

Embeddings in Scoring: Google uses page embeddings, site embeddings, site focus, and site radius in its scoring. Page embeddings and site embeddings are techniques that represent pages and sites in a multi-dimensional space to capture semantic relationships. Site focus and site radius likely determine how focused a site is on particular topics and how broad its coverage is.

Click Data Usage: Google tracks various click metrics such as bad clicks, good clicks, clicks, longest clicks, and site-wide impressions. These metrics help understand user behavior and satisfaction with search results.

Page Quality (PQ):Google uses something called Page Quality (PQ) to assess how good a webpage is. One fascinating part of this measurement is that Google uses a Large Language Model (LLM) to estimate the "effort" put into creating article pages.

What is Effort Estimation?:Effort estimation means figuring out how much work went into making a webpage. If a page looks like it took a lot of time and resources to create, it is considered higher quality. This helps Google determine if it is unique and valuable.

How to Score High on Effort Calculations:

• Tools: Include useful tools that users can interact with.
• Images and Videos: Use high-quality images and videos that add value.
• Unique Information: Provide original and unique content that can't be found elsewhere.
• Depth of Information: Offer detailed and comprehensive information on the topic.

Topical Authority:Topical authority is a concept where a site is seen as an expert or highly authoritative on a specific subject. Google uses this to rank websites based on how well they cover a topic.

How Google evaluates your website:

High siteFocusScore means your site is very focused on a specific topic.

Small siteRadius means your pages are consistently related to your main topic.

siteEmbeddings and pageEmbeddings are used to understand and compare the content and themes of your site and its pages.

By ensuring your website is focused on a specific topic, and that your pages consistently align with this topic, you can improve your site's topical authority and perform better in search rankings. Additionally, by putting in more effort into creating high-quality, unique, and comprehensive content with useful tools, images, and videos, you can score higher on Google's effort calculations, further boosting your SEO performance.

Key Ranking Factors for SEO Professionals:

1. Navboost and Click Data

Google utilizes features like "Navboost" and "Glue" to determine which results appear on their search results pages (SERPs). These systems analyze various types of clicks:

• Good Clicks: Positive user interactions.
• Bad Clicks: Negative interactions, like quickly returning to the search results (pogo-sticking).
• Click Length: How long users stay on a page.
• These metrics help Google identify valuable and relevant results, effectively prioritizing a good user experience.

2. Chrome Browser Clickstreams

Google leverages data from the Chrome browser to gather comprehensive click data from billions of users. This data helps them:

• Determine the most popular pages on a site.
• Decide which pages to feature in site links (e.g., "Pricing," "Blog," "Login" pages).
• This shows that Google has extensive insight into user behavior through Chrome, influencing their search algorithms.

3. Whitelists in Specific Sectors

Google maintains whitelists for certain types of searches, such as travel, COVID-19, and politics. These whitelists ensure that only trusted sources appear for sensitive queries, helping maintain the quality and reliability of search results.

4. Quality Rater Feedback

Google uses a platform called EWOK, where human raters evaluate the quality of search results. The feedback from these raters:

• Helps train Google's algorithms.
• May directly influence search rankings.
• This means human judgment plays a role in shaping the search experience, ensuring that results meet quality standards.

5. Click Data and Link Quality

Google classifies link quality based on click data into three tiers:

• Low Quality: Links with few or no clicks.
• Medium Quality: Links with some clicks.
• High Quality: Links with a high volume of clicks from verified devices (like Chrome users).
• High-quality links pass more ranking signals (like PageRank), while low-quality links are ignored but don’t harm rankings.

6. Content Quality and Relevance

• Embeddings and Topic Focus: Embeddings are mathematical representations of webpage content, helping search engines understand context and relevance. Google assigns a score based on how well a site maintains a clear focus on a specific topic, so it's important for websites to keep their content cohesive and centered around a defined subject.
• Panda Algorithm: Contrary to some beliefs, Baby Panda references an older system and is not related to the HCU. However, the HCU seems to share similarities with Panda, suggesting that similar strategies may aid recovery. A potential experiment to recover traffic for sites hit by HCU involves improving click signals and links. Volunteers with affected sites are welcome to participate in this hypothesis testing.

7. Onsite Prominence

This score evaluates how well certain pages within a site are related to high-traffic pages. It measures the relevance and popularity of the content within the site, identifying which pages are most valuable for ranking.

8. Image Quality

Google assesses image quality by analyzing user interactions, such as clicks. Factors like usefulness, presentation, and engagement determine the quality of images. High-quality images that attract more user clicks are deemed more valuable.

9. Authority

• Seed Sites (High-Authority Websites): Seed sites are top-quality web pages favored by search engines. Linking with them enhances authority by signaling credibility and quality to search engines, boosting rankings and visibility.
• Fresh Links: Links from newer web pages are more valuable than older ones. Fresh links carry a multiplier effect, boosting the perceived relevance and authority of the linked content.

10. Anchor Text

Google closely examines anchor text for spam phrases. Trusted sources are less likely to be penalized for spammy anchors, but it's still important to ensure anchor text is relevant and non-spammy to avoid penalties.

Other Signals

• Sandbox & Host Age: Contrary to popular belief, domain age does not impact ranking. However, new domains can be sandboxed to prevent spam during their early stages.
• Consistent Quality Across Site: Google measures the overall quality and consistency of a site. Inconsistencies or low-quality content in certain parts of a site can negatively affect its overall SEO scores.

Key Takeaways for Marketers Focused on Organic Search Traffic

If you’re interested in the value of organic search traffic but aren’t into the technical details of how Google works, here’s a summary of key points from Google’s evolution between 2005 and 2023. This summary includes insights from a recent leak of Google documents.

Brand Matters Most

Key Point: Building a strong, recognizable brand is crucial.

Google is increasingly favoring big, powerful brands over small, independent sites. This trend is evident from research by Datos. To improve your organic search rankings and traffic, focus on building a notable, popular brand in your industry outside of Google search.

E-E-A-T Might Be Overstated

Key Point: Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) might not be as significant as believed.

While Google does recognize entities like authors, the exact influence of E-E-A-T on rankings is unclear. There’s a suspicion that E-E-A-T is more about perception than actual ranking impact. Some top-ranking brands lack strong E-E-A-T attributes, suggesting other factors might be at play.

User Intent Over Content and Links

Key Point: User intent signals can outweigh traditional SEO factors.

Google heavily relies on user behavior, like what people click on in search results, to rank pages. For example, if users frequently search for something and click on a specific result, Google will prioritize that result. This means creating demand and engaging users in your target region can boost your rankings more than just focusing on links and optimized content.

Classic Ranking Factors Are Less Important

Key Point: Traditional ranking factors like PageRank and anchor text are less influential.

Page titles remain important, but other classic SEO elements have declined in significance. Google’s ranking systems have evolved, and factors like user behavior are now more influential.

Challenges for Small and Medium Businesses

Key Point: SEO favors established brands and popular domains.

For small and medium businesses, SEO might not yield significant returns until you build a strong reputation and demand among a sizable audience. Google’s current system rewards established brands and domains, making it harder for new players to rank well.

Next Steps for the Search Industry

Key Point: The SEO industry needs critical analysis and better journalism.

There’s a need for SEO professionals to critically analyze Google’s statements and not take them at face value. Accurate reporting and analysis can influence public opinion, policy, and even Google's practices.

If you want to succeed in organic search traffic, focus on building a strong brand, understand the evolving importance of user intent, and stay critical of the information and trends in the SEO industry.

9 Ranking Strategies From the Leaked Google Search Document

1. Invest in Site Design and Architecture: Ensure your website has a well-designed, intuitive structure to enhance navigation and user experience (NavBoost).
2. Optimize and Remove Irrelevant Pages: For better SEO, remove or block pages that aren't relevant to your primary topics. Focus on contextually bridging related topics to strengthen your site's topical connections. Establish a clear target topic and optimize each page thoroughly.
3. Optimize Headings and Content: Use headings that align with common queries and provide clear, concise answers in the paragraphs below. This helps in embedding optimization on both a page-by-page and site-wide basis.
4. Increase Impressions and Clicks: Write content that attracts more impressions and clicks. Even incremental gains are valuable. Consistently provide a good user experience and expand your topics strategically to boost performance.
5. Regularly Update Content: Update your content frequently to maintain relevance and freshness. Add unique information, new images, and video content to enhance your content's value and score high on Google's "effort calculations" metric.
6. Maintain Quality and Frequency: While it's challenging, consistently producing high-quality content pays off. Google applies site-level quality scores, so focus on maintaining high standards and regular updates.
7. Monitor Impressions Growth: Impressions for your entire website are crucial quality indicators. Growing impressions is a positive sign of your site's health and performance.
8. Focus on Entities and Salience: Ensure your content includes important entities and achieves high salience scores. Top entity identification is crucial for SEO success.
9. Remove Underperforming Pages: Delete pages with poor user metrics, no backlinks, and no potential for improvement. Improving site-wide scores by removing weak links is as important as optimizing new content.

Conclusion:

Understanding and implementing the insights from the recent Google Search ranking leak can significantly enhance your SEO strategy. From optimizing your site architecture and regularly updating content to focusing on user intent and building a strong brand, these key factors are crucial for improving your organic search performance. The detailed metrics, such as PageRank variants, site embeddings, and click data usage, provide a deeper understanding of how Google evaluates and ranks web pages.

To leverage these advanced strategies and stay ahead in the competitive SEO landscape, partnering with an expert SEO agency is essential. FreshBoost SEO Agency specializes in cutting-edge SEO techniques and can help you navigate these complex ranking factors. With our expertise, you can ensure your website not only meets but exceeds Google’s ever-evolving standards, driving more organic traffic and achieving higher rankings. Contact FreshBoost today to elevate your SEO game and secure your position at the top of search results.