Google Has Been Lying About Search

I'm shocked - Shocked I tell you! - to find that Google hasn't told the truth about search. The biggest findings in the Google Search leak - The Verge. OK, so no one is shocked.

2500 internal documents relating to the Google search algorithm were leaked recently, and eventually Google admitted that they were real, before blowing even more smoke over the issue. The documents don't detail the entire algorithm, but there are 14,000 parameters mentioned in the leaks. And researchers will be going thru the documents for a while yet.

But one thing is clear Google hasn't been telling all of the truth.

Over the years, Google spokespeople have repeatedly denied that user clicks factor into ranking websites, for example — but the leaked documents make note of several types of clicks users make and indicate they feed into ranking pages in search. Testimony from the antitrust suit by the US Department of Justice previously revealed a ranking factor called Navboost that uses searchers’ clicks to elevate content in search.

“To me, the larger, meta takeaway is that even more of Google’s public statements about what they collect and how their search engine works have strong evidence against them,” Rand Fishkin, a veteran of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry.

And there is a plea for journalists to stop being PR flacks and get back to being journalists.

“Journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google Search need to stop uncritically repeating Google’s public statements, and take a much harsher, more adversarial view of the search giant’s representatives,” Fishkin says. “When publications repeat Google’s claims as though they are fact, they’re helping Google spin a story that’s only useful to the company and not to practitioners, users, or the public.”

Hat tip to Pixy Misa - Daily News Stuff 1 June 2024: Xboxnt Edition.

To nobody's great surprise, Google lied.