A purported leak of 2,500 pages of internal documentation from Google sheds light on how Search, the most powerful arbiter of the internet, operates.
The leaked documents touch on topics like what kind of data Google collects and uses, which sites Google elevates for sensitive topics like elections, how Google handles small websites, and more. Some information in the documents appears to be in conflict with public statements by Google representatives, according to Fishkin and King.
Edit: If you’re going to downvote me, please take the time to explain why you think I’m wrong. Stop being the hive mind.
Tell me you don’t know shit about SEO without telling me you don’t know shit about SEO.
Just because there are people who do bad things doesn’t mean the industry is bad or have bad intentions. SEO isn’t ads. Advertorials can be a tactic of SEO, but it’s not SEO as a whole. Same with clickbait because it works, and I guarantee you also fall for it constantly.
SEO is about understanding what someone needs and creating an experience to ensure that someone finds the answer to what they need through content and/or a product to solve their needs.
This can be achieved through copywriting, researching search trends and queries, technical analysis of websites and how they render, providing guidance on helpful assets (photos, pdfs, videos, form, copy, etc), PR outreach because links are how people move around online or discover things, social planning because social media are a form of search engines, and more.
And finally, SEOs are not responsible for how Google treats shit. That’s Google who is responsible. Google is the one that tweaks the algorithm and doesn’t catch spammy shit. In fact many SEOs catch it and report it to Google’s reps, but they are the ones who can ensure the right team(s) fix the issue.
Fuck SEOs - that is why you are getting downvoted. Organic content creation has been ruined by you AND google. Own your problems, beg forgiveness, stop playing the stupid game where there are no winners
You’re exactly the person I was talking about - the hive mind. You don’t critically think and you blame an entire industry that has niches and actors of all sorts. You’d probably say all black people are bad because a few on a street did something wrong once.
Please, tell me YOUR industry so I can have fun shitting on it and drawing asinine conclusions.
Worked with more than a few SEOs. Software developer here.
I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences. There are a lot of bad SEOs, but there are a lot of good ones. I’ve worked with a lot of shitty developers as well.
Would it be fair of me to blame software developers for the likes of Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, or poorly implemented Wordpress pages where links get hijacked and redirected to spam? Or those that use AI to write code? Or for slapping resource on top of resource to slow down pages and bandaid shitty spaghetti code?
Edit: or pushing out half baked bullshit that breaks or has a ton of holes? As if the software development industry isn’t responsible for coding worms, trackers, or other malicious stuff. So many hacks/charlatans in software development too.
Yup, blame away, but also recognise lots of good that they have done too. Open Source, the fediverse, medical software, communications software. To name but a few. What good have SEOs ever done?
Positioning non profits, government agencies, and more competitively in results. Even Google gets outranked for their own keywords.
User experience and flow for many companies that don’t have these people, suggesting content topics to solve questions, ensuring that sites are found/rendering correctly and pointing out/fixing developer fuck ups, creating accessibility (markup suggestions and alt text), finding ways to compete with competitors.
Don’t confuse content and marketing with SEO. Many of them don’t listen to us anyway.
Re-read that and ask if any of it has actual value. Gaming Google is a bad way to make a living. Playing by their rules makes you complicit. You are part of a cabal of rogues that extort businesses into better results and if they don’t play then they are relegated to oblivion. The world would be a better place without SEOs. All those examples are because other SEOs have broken the system. The world would be a better place without Google at this stage. Do you bother with any other search engine? Do you try to make things better instead of trying to exploit a dying service that only maintains it’s monopoly through anti-competitive business practices.
Seriously: fuck SEOs. Go take your good skills and intelligence and go do something worthwhile
Accessibility is because SEOs games the system? Developers not knowing how their JavaScript and code render to crawlers is SEOs gaming the system? Are you serious?
You realize mom and pop shops don’t have marketing experts or big teams to help them compete? You do know that prior to Google, you paid PEOPLE to list your site on a directory? Because bribes and human fallibility doesn’t exist, right?
If you’re so smart and SEOs are fucking it all up and you have such a problem, what is your solution? No one else has figured it out - not Bing, not DDG, not Jo schmo’s flavor of the month search engine. Now we have AI to mass produce and provide shitty content to the masses, thanks software engineers. You will ultimately end up having done more harm than ANY SEO ever did.
wait what is “social planning” and how is it different from conventional marketing on social media. That seems pretty far removed from search engines
Great question! Search engines crawl social media and discover links. It can be a sign of trust and authority if it’s shared widely, which can help boost signals of page importance to Google (or other engines) and help with pushing up in organic ranking positions.
Harmonizing brand details (name, address, phone number, website link) across all social platforms is important so you don’t send mixed signals or lead to unneeded redirects.
There’s also figuring out what page(s) you want to ensure are showcased if multiple URL links are allowed or maybe your social team doesn’t know all of the page assets you have to satisfy their audience, such as an orphaned page. These are part of what are called “backlinks”.
Hashtags do matter for some platforms and knowing how to research them for intent is wise.
There’s also open graph (OG) metadata that you can set on a webpage that allows your metadata to be different on social platforms than you would use for a search engine - tailor to your audience!
Edit: one other thing is, while not social media, maybe connecting with a social team (if there is one) to find out if any posts need to be applied to Google Business listings via a Google Post for local locations.