Todd Jones
Along with being the resident writer for MainWP and content hacker at Copyflight, I specialize in writing about startups, entrepreneurs, social media, WordPress and inbound marketing topics.
June MainWP Roundup: The Google leak that set the SEO world on fire
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Monday, May 27, 2024 while Americans were still a bit loopy from a long weekend, Rand Fishkin dropped a video on X (Twitter) signaling a coming firestorm.
It seems, through chance or strategic maneuvering, a document from the Google API warehouse found its way into the hands of an anonymous source.
Anytime you have a leak, the story is almost as fascinating as what we learn. At least to me. The entire MainWP Roundup for June 2024 is dedicated to this story.
Are you ready?
The Google Leak Story: What happened.
Around May 7th, Rand got an anonymous email from someone claiming to get their hands on 2,500 internal Google documents. Skeptical, Fishkin decided to verify.
He reached out to three ex-Googler friends to get their thoughts off the record. Two of those three verified that it looked like a legitimate document, while the third one wanted no part of even reviewing the document.
Fishkin goes into the verification and the comments made by his friends.
With that, he decided it was most likely a legitimate Google document. Once he verified, he reached out to SEO technical specialist Michael King on Friday, May 24th.
He needed help to decipher the API code. The two had a call on the Friday before Memorial Day. King parsed through the document over the extended weekend and wrote his analysis in an article.
Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land sums up the events like this:
“What happened. As we covered, thousands of documents, which appear to come from Google’s internal Content API Warehouse, were released March 13 on Github by an automated bot called yoshi-code-bot. These documents were shared with Rand Fishkin, SparkToro co-founder, earlier this month (An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them on SparkToro).”
I’m not quite sure who yoshi-code-bot is, but Fishkin and King credited Erfan Azimi and Dan Petrovic as sources for the leak in a live video show and then subsequently on social media.
Google Algorithm Leak Exposed: See video below.
Cyrus SEO reveals Dan Petrovic as one of the leaks.
Petrovic claimed he had the documents a month before the leak. He talks about his part in this an article including filing a bug report of the exposed repo.
“Wait what? Yes that’s right, I’ve independently discovered the exposed repo and have been studying it in solitude for a considerable amount of time. Dissecting, analysing, mapping, correlating… it was the most fun and exciting time of my SEO career.”
Dejan Marketing
And a little context. Is it a coincidence or not?
“So a strange thing happens, about the same time I report this to Google, the anonymous source passes it to Rand. Talk about a coincidence!”
Dan Petrovic
It was never his intention to disclose the information, but he did work with King to learn more about the information, including passing his research and methods on to King. So, curiously, there were two initial, anonymous leaks.
Google’s Reply to Search Engine Land was,
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information. 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.”
The response to Search Engine Land was the same as the one to Verge and other media outlets. There is also an antitrust Lawsuit pending against Google, which is shedding insight into the inner workings of Google’s search rankings.
Coming soon, webinars about the link with Michael King.
Michael King is set to appear twice on Wednesday, June 12th, to talk about his discoveries.
Webinar – Unveiling Google’s secrets: SEO insights from the huge Google leak + Overtime live Q&A
A Humorous SEO Strategy.
Articles to learn more.
Google Documents Leaked & SEOs Are Making Some Wild Assumptions – Ahrefs, Patrick Stox
Patrick Stox gets the task for Ahrefs in this article about the leak. He starts with a recap of the events and then gives his thoughts on what it means.
Rand’s Video update at SparkToro
Rand Fishkin tries to do his summation in 7 minutes (it ends up being 11 minutes). The article at SparkToro includes a transcript.
Unpacking Google’s massive search documentation leak – Search Engine Land
Andrew Ansley gives a detailed, yet distilled summary of a 40-page PDF report he created based on the document. The article is long, with an estimated reading time of 19 minutes.
Erdenay Kokden offers a TL;DR version on LinkedIn. He gives his summary of what the leak means for SEO. You can see here.
Wrapping it up
The Google leak set the SEO world on fire. Combine that with the ongoing anti-trust trial, issues with Google results in the AI Overviews, and it has been a rough few weeks for Google.
What does that mean for SEO? Mostly likely, not much. The things you have done to service your clients still matter. Most SEO experts say, “Listen to what Google says and test to be sure.” Never blindly accept Google’s advice. At the end of the day, create the kind of content that your readers want to share.
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