Google’s in-house docs about search ranking leak online, sparking SEO frenzy A trove of documents that appear to describe how Google ranks search results has appeared online, likely as the result of accidental publication by an in-house bot. The leaked documentation describes an old version of Google's Content Warehouse API and provides a glimpse of Google Search’s inner workings. The material appears …
I don't think it should surprise anyone that Google lies their ass off about how their search works.
Mostly just to keep the spammers guessing, but especially the last couple years with it all going to shite and Google embracing the spammers as being more ads to serve up.
Just wait until the SEOs play with this treasure trove and figure out by trial and error which of those factors are highly rated. Pretty soon an "I'm feeling lucky" button that gives you a random page out of Google's entire cache might give you better results than Google does.
And that's before it integrates AI and directs you to pages with quality results like "eat a small rock daily to improve digestion" lol
Lots of birds do, if they have hard to digest food e.g. hard seeds, as grit helps grind the food down..
e.g. bearded tit (spoiler, not a tit but a parrotbill) is a difficult bird to see in the UK, and it changes diet over a year, in "Summer" months it feeds on insects, but over "Winter", where few UK insects around it switches to seed and needs grit in its diet over winter to help digest the seeds, and at nature reserves (the few where it can be found) grit tends to be put out on tables so the birds have easy access & also gives wildlife fans a good chance of seeing a bird (visiting grit table) that is otherwise difficult to spot as usually hidden away in vegetation.
in the dictionary definition. It certainly doesn't really add to my knowledge. I never trusted Google from the off so don't lend much weight to their statements. Thus being ready for when there's a leak to justify my scepticism,
And I return to a growing suggestion that I will believe (and pay for) "AI" when it delivers me a page of cruft free search results that I, not the search engine, want me to see.
"Google uses websites viewed in Chrome as a quality signal, seen in the API as the parameter ChromeInTotal."
The idea I immediately jumped to was that everyone's Chrome browser is reporting all page visits back to Google. I suppose the alternatives are that Google Analytics updates this number but that only works for websites that use GA. Alternatively Google search records when someone using Chrome clicks a search result that leads to a particular web page. Those two options don't make as much sense as my first thought.
Why is ChromeInTotal being used as a measure of quality over visits by any browser? I keep coming back to the idea that it is because Google control Chrome and can know that a visit is genuine because they are recording all Chrome use.
Is this something that everyone except me knows about and I missed the news that every page visit in Chrome is reported back to Google? I guess it wouldn't be surprising, except I would be slightly surprised that anyone would use that browser knowing that.
One possibility is that when a search result is clicked and the user then clicks on links within it these, otherwise invisible clicks, would be reported back to base to boost the relevance of these links. For someone using it for research that could be a useful thing. However, given that it could be following a user making purchases, linking to their bank or whatever this is not necessarily reassuring.
Classic stupid positive back loop were the random walk extra clicks on a result are then amplfied.
You can't base your system on input directly influenced by your output.
I also object to sellers ranking and "telling" you item x is especially popular. Sales rank should only be visible to the seller.
Because governments don't want you to remember stuff. Campaign promises. Things they have erased from websites in their legal domain (which Google's cached copy would not be in).
Google's cache was really useful. Most of the net is. Google's cache has gone. Most of the net will too.
Governments got caught out with the whole internet, global village, empowered citizen thing. The Empire has been striking back for some time now. Haven't you noticed?
Incidentally, this leak may be a good indicator of what happens when you replace carbon-based lifeforms with AI. So until the AI bubble bursts and goes the way of NFTs and the metaverse, grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.
Google used to have a motto: "Don't be evil".
Getting rid of it in 2015 was a wakeup call. Then the motto was "Do the right thing"....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out", adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent"
Now Meta and Alphabet are the biggest exploiters of all....
Tragic.
Ok, so I guess some people still need to use google for something, but seriously there are search engines that at least try to pretend the results are related to what you searched for. And that at least purport to respect your privacy.
The argument that doing those things gave you worse results because reasons is long over now that google has their AI results.
The good news is that the google AI results are hysterically funny, so there is that.
So what this story basically says is Google are bunch of lying scheming scumbags, who you should not do business with with major antibiotics in case they pass on their disease. Now about those regulators that obviously lied too, will they do anything or just roll over at the next wine and cheese party held bribe, sorry entertain by Megacorp or maybe seriously start thinking about breaking up the company?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
