Google’s search leak: 200 words summary

I read up on Googles May 27th 2024 leak.

Below I list my summary of what it means for your SEO work.

Things I list here are leaked realities:

Content:

• If content is short, Google checks if it is original (short is OK if original)
• Page titles should match keywords. Google checks this match (Morningscore checks for this)
• Outlinking (linking to other websites from your article) is apparently not important for SEO – I would still do it though.
• Authors on articles are being captured by Google (add yourself as author on your websites articles)
• Date of an article is important (Google wants fresh content)
• Google is scoring how much a website focuses on one core topic and also scores how far the site goes away from that topic
• Mentioning keywords at top of content is important

Link building:

• If a backlink is with a big fat font, it probably carries more weight (Google at least checks for it)
• Backlinks that carry traffic are what really boosts your domain authority and your keyword rankings.
• Mentions of a brand is also a ranking signal. Something Google has even said since 2019, but now there is proof.
• Google checks the homepage of backlinks to see if they trust it
• Domain age is a ranking factor. Older domains do better

We still don’t know the impact of these things. But now we do now Google checks for them.

Official leak article:
https://ipullrank.com/google-algo-leak

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

Update May 31st 2024:
New Sparktoro overview of changes in more detail than this post covers:
https://sparktoro.com/blog/11-min-video-the-google-api-leak-should-change-how-marketers-and-publishers-do-seo/