Google SEO Leak 2024: Top 10 Ranking Factors Revealed

The SEO community has been abuzz following the May 2024 SEO leak of Google API data, which has revealed intricate details about the search giant’s ranking algorithms. 

These leaked documents reveal over 14,000 factors that Google might use to determine search rankings, providing an unprecedented glimpse into the mysterious world of Google’s search algorithm. 

This information helps SEO professionals with valuable insights to refine their strategies and boost their rankings.

The Google SEO Leak and Its Implications

The leak originated from a Google API document titled “yoshi-code-bot/elixer-google-api,” shared by Erfan Azimi with Rand Fishkin of SparkToro, who then collaborated with Michael King of iPullRank to distribute the story. This leak is not a result of hacking or whistleblowing but a significant oversight in document security.

The Top 10 Ranking Factors 

Here are the ten most important ranking factors from the leak, along with actionable tips to improve your site’s ranking:

User Engagement Metrics

The leaked information underscores Google’s reliance on various user engagement metrics to assess the quality and relevance of content. Key metrics include “goodClicks,” “badClicks,” “lastLongestClicks,” “unsquashedClicks,” click-through rates (CTR), and dwell time.

Impact: High user engagement is a strong indicator of valuable content, potentially leading to improved search rankings. Engaging content that keeps users on the page longer and encourages interaction sends positive signals to Google.

Actionable Insights:

• Optimize Content for Engagement: Create interactive and engaging content to encourage user interaction. This can include multimedia elements such as videos, infographics, and interactive quizzes that captivate users and keep them on the page longer.
• Compelling Headlines and Meta Descriptions: Use captivating headlines and meta descriptions to increase click-through rates (CTR). A well-crafted meta description that accurately describes the content and includes a call to action can significantly boost CTR.
• Enhance User Experience (UX): Improve your website’s UX to keep visitors engaged longer. Simplifying navigation, improving page load times, and ensuring mobile responsiveness are crucial steps.

Chrome Data Usage

Contrary to prior claims, the leak reveals that Google utilizes data from Chrome, such as browsing history and scroll depth, to inform its ranking algorithms.

Impact: User interaction data from Chrome significantly influences search rankings, highlighting the need for websites to perform well across all user metrics. This means that factors such as load speed, ease of navigation, and overall user satisfaction are crucial.

Actionable Insights:

• Monitor Key Metrics: Keep an eye on bounce rates and session durations to optimize user engagement. High bounce rates and low session durations can indicate user dissatisfaction with the content or site experience.
• Optimize for Chrome Performance: Ensure your site loads quickly and offers a smooth experience, particularly in Chrome. Utilize tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify and fix performance issues.
• Behavior Analysis Tools: Use tools to analyze user behavior and make necessary adjustments. Heatmaps and session recordings can provide insights into how users interact with your site.

Page Quality and Content Freshness

Google evaluates the freshness and relevance of content using factors like BylineDate and SyntacticDate. Regularly updated and high-quality content is prioritized.

Impact: Maintaining fresh and relevant content is of much importance for sustaining high search rankings. Outdated content can lead to decreased user trust and engagement, while fresh content signals to Google that your site is active and valuable.

Actionable Insights:

• Regular Content Updates: Frequently update your content to keep it current and relevant. This can involve adding new information, updating statistics, and revising outdated sections.
• High-Quality Content: Focus on creating valuable content that addresses current trends and user needs. Conduct regular content audits to ensure that all your content remains relevant and of high quality.
• Structured Data: Use structured data to provide clear publishing dates and updates. This helps search engines understand the context and relevance of your content, potentially improving its visibility in search results.
• Highlight Updates: Clearly mark content updates to signal relevance to users and search engines. Use phrases like “Updated on [Date]” to show that your content is current.

Link Quality and Diversity

Google assesses the relevance and authority of linking domains, the context of anchor text, and link placement, stressing the importance of link quality and diversity.

Impact: High-quality, diverse backlinks from authoritative sources are essential for better rankings. Links from reputable sites act as endorsements, signaling to Google that your content is trustworthy and valuable.

Actionable Insights:

• Acquire Reputable Backlinks: Focus on getting backlinks from reputable and relevant websites. This can be achieved through strategies like guest blogging, partnerships, and creating shareable content.
• Contextual Anchor Texts: Ensure anchor texts are contextually relevant and varied. Avoid over-optimization by using a mix of branded, exact match, and partial match anchor texts.
• Avoid Spammy Practices: Steer clear of spammy link-building tactics. Black-hat SEO practices can lead to penalties and harm your site’s reputation.

Site Authority

 A “siteAuthority” metric, similar to domain authority, measures overall domain credibility and trustworthiness, despite Google’s previous denials of such a metric.

Impact: Building domain authority through quality backlinks and brand mentions is vital for SEO. Higher domain authority can lead to better search visibility and increased organic traffic.

Actionable Insights:

• Boost Domain Authority: Build high-quality backlinks to enhance domain authority. Focus on earning links from sites with high domain authority themselves.
• Establish Brand Authority: Position your brand as a niche authority through consistent, valuable content. Engage in thought leadership activities, such as publishing whitepapers, conducting webinars, and speaking at industry events.
• Digital PR: Engage in digital PR to improve site credibility. Effective PR campaigns can result in high-quality backlinks, increased brand awareness, and improved domain authority.

Exact Match Domains (EMD)

The documents suggest a crackdown on exact match domains (EMDs), which previously enjoyed ranking advantages.

Impact: This shift encourages a focus on content quality and relevance over relying solely on EMDs. Google is placing more emphasis on the overall value and relevance of a website rather than just the presence of keywords in the domain name.

Actionable Insights:

• Relevant Domain Names: Ensure your domain name is relevant but do not rely solely on EMDs for rankings. A brandable, memorable domain name can be just as effective.
• High-Quality Content: Focus on creating high-quality, relevant content that meets user intent. Comprehensive, well-researched content is more likely to rank well.
• Holistic Optimization: Optimize your website holistically rather than depending on domain name alone. This includes technical SEO, on-page optimization, and high-quality link-building.

Sandbox Effect

An attribute called “hostAge” validates the sandbox effect, where new websites are temporarily restricted to prevent spam.

Impact: New websites must build trust signals and avoid spammy practices to exit the sandbox period quickly. Establishing credibility early on is crucial for gaining traction in search rankings.

Actionable Insights:

• Quality Content from Outset: Build high-quality content from the beginning. Launch your site with a strong content base that addresses user needs and provides value.
• Avoid Spammy Tactics: Steer clear of spammy SEO tactics to reduce sandbox duration. Focus on ethical SEO practices that build long-term value.
• Gain Trust: Earn credible backlinks and user engagement to build trust. Seek out partnerships and collaborations with reputable sites in your niche.

Author and Entity Authority

Google tracks the authority of content authors and associated entities, affecting credibility and rankings.

Impact: Content from recognized experts can enhance site authority and improve rankings. Establishing the credibility of authors and entities associated with your content can significantly boost its perceived value.

Actionable Insights:

• Credible Authors: Attribute content to credible and authoritative authors. Include author bios that highlight their expertise and credentials.
• Build Author Reputations: Develop the reputation of your content creators as field experts. Encourage authors to engage in activities that build their personal brands, such as speaking engagements and publishing research.
• Structured Data for Authors: Use structured data to highlight author credentials and expertise. This helps search engines recognize the authority of your content contributors.

Topical Relevance

The “siteFocusScore” and “siteRadius” metrics evaluate how closely a site adheres to a single topic and the degree to which a page deviates from the core topic.

Impact: High topical relevance enhances a site’s rankings for queries related to its primary topics. Sites with content that deeply focuses on specific topics should receive higher scores for those topics.

Actionable Insights:

• Develop Comprehensive Content: Create detailed and focused content around specific themes to establish topical authority.
• Use Relevant Keywords Naturally: Incorporate relevant keywords within your content to signal topic relevance.
• Robust Internal Linking: Develop a strong internal linking structure to connect related content and strengthen the topical focus of your site.

Onsite Prominence

“OnSiteProminence” evaluates the significance of a document within a website, determined by simulating traffic flow from the homepage and other high-traffic pages.

Impact: The more links a page receives from important pages, the higher its OnSiteProminence score. Google uses simulated traffic to estimate how frequently users might navigate to a page from key entry points on the site.

Actionable Insights:

• Boost Internal Links: Ensure key pages within your site link to important content to increase their prominence. Include links to significant pages from your homepage and other high-traffic pages.
• Easy Navigation: Make it easy for users to find and navigate to crucial pages from various points within your site.

The Unified Theory of Ranking: A Mathematical Approach

While the exact formula used by Google remains a secret, the leak offers insights into how various factors might be mathematically combined to influence rankings. 

Loving how Andrew Ansley attempted to create a “Unified theory of ranking” using only the leaked factors

This is obviously incomplete, but impressive nonetheless

His @sengineland breakdown is also one of the very best we’ve seen to date – tons of nuggets from the docs explained pic.twitter.com/BDSQ6TSjCi

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) May 31, 2024

Here’s a simplified version based on the leaked information:

Definitions and Metrics

• R: Overall ranking score
• UIS (User Interaction Scores):
  • UgcScore: User-generated content engagement
  • TitleMatchScore: Relevance of titles to user queries
  • ChromeInTotal: Interactions tracked via Chrome
  • SiteImpressions: Total site impressions
  • TopicImpressions: Impressions on topic-specific pages
  • SiteClicks: Click-through rate for the site
  • TopicClicks: Click-through rate for topic-specific pages
• CQS (Content Quality Scores):
  • ImageQualityClickSignals: Quality signals from image clicks
  • VideoScore: Video quality and engagement
  • ShoppingScore: Shopping-related content score
  • PageEmbedding: Semantic embedding of page content
  • SiteEmbedding: Semantic embedding of site content
  • SiteRadius: Deviation within the site embedding
  • SiteFocus: Topic focus metric
  • TextConfidence: Text relevance and quality confidence
  • EffortScore: Effort and quality in content creation
• LS (Link Scores):
  • TrustedAnchors: Quality and trustworthiness of inbound links
  • SiteLinkIn: Average value of incoming links
  • PageRank: Combined PageRank factors

Formula Components

• Relevance Boost (RB): Based on query and content match
• Quality before Adjustment (QnA): Baseline quality measure
• Semantic Text Scores (STS): Based on text understanding, salience, and entities
• Quality Boost (QB): Overall content and site quality
• Site Authority Score (SAS): Trust, reliability, and link authority
• Effort Score (EFTS): Page effort including text, multimedia, and comments
• Freshness Score (FS): Content update and original post date
• Content-Specific Adjustments (CSA): Adjustments based on specific content features
• Chrome Data Score (CDS): Based on Chrome data interactions
• SERP Demotion Score (SDS): Reduction based on SERP experience
• Experimental Q Star Score (EQSS): Experimental variable score

Simplified Formula

R = ((UIS + CQS + LS) × (RB + QB) + CSA) – SDS

Relevance to a Web Page

1. User Interaction Scores (UIS): This measures how users interact with your page. For example, if users spend a lot of time on your page, engage with the content, and do not bounce back quickly to the search results, your UIS will be higher.
2. Content Quality Scores (CQS): This evaluates the intrinsic quality of your content. High-quality, well-written, and informative content will receive a higher score.
3. Link Scores (LS): This assesses the number and quality of backlinks to your page. Pages linked to by reputable sites will have a higher LS.
4. Relevance Boost (RB): This measures how closely your page content matches the search query. If your page content is highly relevant to the search terms, you get a higher RB.
5. Quality Boost (QB): This assesses the overall quality of your content and the website. High-quality content and a well-regarded website will increase your QB.
6. Content-Specific Adjustments (CSA): These are special adjustments made based on unique features of your content. For example, if your content includes multimedia elements like videos and images that enhance the user’s experience, it might receive a positive CSA.
7. SERP Demotion Score (SDS): This represents any penalties your page might incur based on negative user experiences in the search results. For example, if users consistently skip your page in favor of others, this score could go up, reducing your overall relevance score.

Example

Imagine you have a blog post about “Healthy Eating Tips.” Here’s how each component might play out:

• UIS: Users spend a lot of time reading your blog, engaging with your tips, and sharing the post.
• CQS: Your blog post is well-written, thoroughly researched, and provides valuable tips.
• LS: Your blog is linked to by other reputable health websites.
• RB: Your content includes the exact keywords users are searching for, like “healthy eating tips” and “nutrition advice.”
• QB: Your website is known for high-quality health content, and this post is no exception.
• CSA: Your blog post includes helpful images, infographics, and a video explaining the tips.
• SDS: Users generally find your blog post useful and do not skip over it in search results.

Based on these factors, your blog post would have a high relevance score, increasing its chances of ranking well in search results.

This simplified approach helps illustrate how different elements of your page contribute to its overall relevance score and how they interact to determine its performance in search engine rankings.

Key Takeaways

The Google API leak shows several critical ranking factors that SEO professionals can leverage to enhance their strategies. By focusing on user engagement, link quality, site authority, content freshness, and other metrics discussed above, SEO professionals can significantly improve their website’s search rankings. Embracing these insights will enable more effective optimization and a stronger online presence.