It was revealed that an automated github bot called yoshi-code-bot accidentally committed to its git repository Google’s internal API documentation.
Most of the SEO community has circled around the comments in the Elixir files that mention specific attributes that google uses to rank. Thanks to Rand Fishkin who initially disclosed this leak to the community at large and to Mike King from iPullRank who did some deeper analysis on the functions themselves.
Caveats
Earlier this week a massive leak was revealed from an anonymous source on what attributes Google Search uses to rank its web pages. This is an unprecedented look at just what exactly Google Search uses to determine page rankings and I dug into the docs and headlines to see what we can use.
I will mention again that a majority of this is interpretation from comments in the source elixir files. They don’t exactly outline how Google uses this information or even more importantly, how it weighs each attribute. So we kind of only have half of the equation here at best. But still, this can be used by SaaS companies in focusing their SEO efforts.
Let’s start with (in our experience) the biggest ranking factors.
Links Still Matter
No surprise, but links still matter in the grand scheme of things. They’re arguably one of the most important ranking factors. But as we’ll show you in the content section of this article, the variety and amount of clicks a link gets in the search engine results page matters a whole lot as well.
This means that if you have dynamic content (like say, a blog using the NextJS framework) you will want to make sure that you utilize the server side rendering and ensure every page or piece of content you want to showcase has its own, easily linkable URL.
Relevancy
When trying to get to the top of the search engine results page, focus on relevancy. Relevancy in this context means do both sides of the link relate to each other.
For example:
If you run a Dog Walker SaaS that organizes a walkers schedule based on the most efficient route, you would do well to build links from relevant blogs like AdoptAPet.com or be featured on a marketplace blog like TheDailyWag. Each side is totally relevant to pets, and Google rewards you for being relevant to both sides of the link.
From Authoritative Websites
You’ll generally want links from “authoritative” or other high ranking websites. In general, this means non spammy websites or websites that Google actively penalizes like adult or gambling websites.
As a reminder, Google does not publish its authority score on websites publicly but you can get close approximations using tools like ahrefs and semrush’s backlink checkers.
Content Matters (But Now How You Think)
Content still matters but really more as an active incentive to the linking website. I mean think about it, The Daily Wag wouldn’t want to link to your company blog about “10 reasons to adopt a dog” that you generated with AI. Instead, they’d really much welcome a link to a page about “Guide To Starting Dog Walking Business” or “3 Case Studies On The Best and Worst Breeds to Walk”. The latter 2 offer a much more interesting and fleshed out experience on guiding someone who may be on the fence about doing dog walking part time vs what anything AI could generate. Boosting your site authority is the goal when it comes to ranking.
It does really boil down to create great content and promote it until it ranks.
Authorships Matter
The repo has mentions of storing the author of the page and potentially using that to rank. We don’t know how much having an author can boost you, we generally recommend having a post by a real person present in your content. People like to follow and hear from real people, not businesses.
Freshness Matters
Simply put, keep your content fresh. If you have blog posts, some may be long in the tooth and need a little updating. We recommend updating your content and having that date reflect somewhere in the page (preferred) or url (less ideal).
Page Titles Matter
Make sure your title matches what’s on the page. This is something Google seems to actively still give cachet to.
Sticking To A Topic (Matters)
Google uses vectorization to determine if your page sticks to the sites core topic or how far it veers from it. I hope to dive deeper into this part of how vector search impacts search results in a future post. For now, we suggest sticking to the core topic of your business or product. Always write for your SaaS customers.
Clicking Through
The leak makes reference to clicks, including differentiating good clicks vs bad clicks and even “long clicks”. In general, this part can be summed up as: Click through rate from the google search results page matters. Google looks to reward people clicking on your result as that sends a signal that the content was at least worthy of a click from the user.
Also, “long clicks” seem to be a measure of “dwell time” or how long a user spent on your page. Notice that this isn’t necessarily how long your content is but how long a user really spends reading or digesting your content.
Things to Avoid
Anchor Mismatches
Again, Google seems to have a whole set of functions dedicated to demoting you in the rankings. One of them is anchorText mismatches. The backlinks to your website should relate in some way to either your SaaS, business, or specific piece of content.
Poor Navigation or UX
Potentially related to how Google factors in Core Web Vital scores, your page should be a pleasant user experience. Whether that means faster load times, less MB’s of javascript, or less content layout shifts, the user experience definitely seems to be taken into consideration.
Other Options
Build Your Brand (Outside of Google)
Building a brand is crucial for organic search growth. Google seems to focus on brand recognition and user interaction signals like click and dwell time as ranking signals. Use this to your advantage by using images and video (depending on where your SaaS customers are) to help boost you in your rankin
There’s still a lot that is left to assess in this documentation leak. Most of it stems from the clients/content_warehouse/lib/google_api/content_warehouse/v1/model/compressed_quality_signals.ex file in the repo. But in general, it can be summed up as:
Write Good Content, on a Website that Doesn’t Suck, and Promote it Until it Ranks
All of this is from the point of view of your customer. If you do all of this, you should be able to start climbing the ranks in the search results page and start increasing traffic to your website.
