Depending on your age, you’ve heard of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Younger people may recall the Edward Snowden revelation or Wikileaks and Julian Assange. More recently, the Panama Papers made headlines.
All these scandals arose through the unintended disclosure of documents.
Well, this past week could be Google’s Panama Papers.
More than 2,000 pages of internal documents from Google shed light on how the most powerful — and most trade-secret protected — search engine in the world works.
Has Google been lying for years about how to optimize for search? Are these documents even relevant to the recent search algorithm change? Or will Google’s AI look to replace how people search for information altogether?
Does it matter who writes the content, not just the domain it sits on?
Or is it like Apple’s Antennagate, when people accused Apple of bad signal reception for iPhone 4 but ultimately said, “It’s probably Verizon’s fault.”
We wanted to know more, so we asked Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategy advisor, for his take. Watch this video or read on to get it:
Google’s been less than honest
This week’s explosive leak of thousands of Google’s internal documents claims to reveal an unprecedented look into the inner workings of its search algorithm. It suggests the tech giant may have been a skosh less than truthful about its operations for years.
On Thursday, a Google spokesperson spoke about the matter for the first time, telling The Verge, “We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information … We’ve shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors that our systems weigh, while also working to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.” But it didn’t talk specifics about the leaked documents’ veracity.
Rand Fishkin, an OG in the SEO industry, wrote that a source provided 2,500 pages from Google to challenge the “lies” propagated by Google employees about the search algorithm’s functionality. According to Rand, the documents detail the Google Search API (application program interface) and the information accessible to its employees.
Unless you’re an SEO geek, the documents’ details are more technical than useful. So, let me explain. The documents don’t confirm Google does anything specifically for search rankings. However, they highlight the types of data that Google — at some point in its history — collects from websites, users, and other points to divine insight into prioritizing that information.
In other words, it’s like getting all the ingredients to make Coca-Cola — including the secret ones — but none of the amounts.
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