A recently leaked document lists around 14,000 factors for Google rankings. SEO experts have since confirmed its authenticity. The document comes from the Google Document AI Warehouse, which is due to be shut down on 16 January 2025.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐ฐ๐น๐๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป๐ฌ
1๏ธโฃ The website I Pull Rank has analysed the leaked document and gained some insights. One of the discoveries is that Google uses the metric “siteAuthority” for its rankings. This metric measures whether domains have authority in certain subject areas and ranks them correspondingly higher in searches for related articles.
2๏ธโฃ Another point is the “Navboost” system, which is mentioned several times in the document. It analyses clicks in order to improve or devalue rankings. Among other things, “good” and “longest” clicks are analysed. “Good” clicks are those where users spend a certain amount of time on the page and do not leave immediately. The “longest” click measures how long users stay on a particular page. The longer this dwell time is, the better the ranking of the page should be. There is also the “last good click” metric, which measures when a page is no longer clicked in order to downgrade it based on age or decreasing relevance. “Navboost” is mentioned 84 times in the leaked document, which further emphasises its importance for Google.
3๏ธโฃ Google also attaches importance to authors who are assigned to the articles and could lend additional authority. Negative factors for the ranking are a poor user experience, pornographic content or misleading links.
๐๐๐ฟ๐๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ด๐ถ๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ก
๐ The page title is compared with the search result and can improve the ranking if it matches.
๐ The date of a post is analysed.
๐ Google checks the originality of short content and rates it accordingly.
๐ Keyword font sizes are taken into account.
๐ Links should lead to current pages as they are important for the ranking.
Google analyses the last 20 changes to a linked page.
๐๐ผ๐ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐น๐ถ๐ฎ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐น๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ธ?๐ค
Although the factors are interesting for SEO experts, details on the weighting of the individual factors in the ranking are missing. The document may not be from the current period and there may have been changes since then. Google has not yet commented on the leak.