Leaked documents provide a glimpse into Google Search

All I ask from Google is to stop ignoring quotes in quoted search strings. I get that the first hits are going to be for sites selling hats and ties if I search for:

necktie and a panama hat

But dammit, if I search for:

"necktie and a panama hat"

…the first hit should always be for the Bob Dylan song “Black Diamond Bay”.

(This is just an example of course.)

The site behavior in this respect appears to vary widely even in the same month. It is doing it fairly correctly right now it seems. I bet they turned up the “don’t be so sleazy” dial some in the last few days, since the data dump and articles about it came out.

Some previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40496967

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40498076

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40505310

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40510125

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40518016

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40525441

The site the article mentions looks like a useful site, but frequently there are other lesser known details (paid placement, link farms, etc.) that are the true cause for a decrease in ranking. Rarely is the story "completely innocent site is punished for doing nothing wrong by big bad Google".

> One variable that Google Search apparently tracks is when and where users click, not just on Google’s core site but any page that is accessed within Google’s Chrome browser. In the past, Google has repeatedly denied factoring that data into its search algorithm.

I suspect as much. And I switched to FF a decade ago.

> Some of the information revealed appears to contradict claims that the company has made publicly. One variable that Google Search apparently tracks is when and where users click, not just on Google’s core site but any page that is accessed within Google’s Chrome browser. In the past, Google has repeatedly denied factoring that data into its search algorithm. Fishkin told me that, among S.E.O. experts, this “reinforces an already long-held belief that Google’s public representatives regularly lie, mislead, and omit key information.”

This flummoxes me that it's written as some big discovery, because it's widely known and accepted that Chrome reports telemetry that a) is reported back to us in Google Search Console and b) affects search results.

Am I misreading this? What's the discovery here?

> One variable that Google Search apparently tracks is when and where users click, not just on Google’s core site but any page that is accessed within Google’s Chrome browser

It's wild that a 2 million dollar payment makes such an obscene violation like this disappear.

>In May, we got a glimpse into the inner workings of Google Search, from a leak of twenty-five hundred pages of the company’s internal documentation. The files seem to have been uploaded to GitHub by an unknown party, in March

Does anyone have a link to this repo?

It seems like google is forcing content towards video. Which I fucking hate for a lot of stuff, because it's much quicker to skim an article, say a review of air purifiers, than get it from a video.

I am happy to bash on google, but I also wonder if arbitrarily picking winners and losers is a unavoidable result of an oversaturated responses for limited or underspecified inputs.

The question we should actually be paying attention to is this: Why is there no meaningful competition in this space?

Can we just ... not use this word anymore? Taboo Gaslighting?

> among S.E.O. experts, this “reinforces an already long-held belief that Google’s public representatives regularly lie, mislead, and omit key information.

Yes. This happens. Because the alternative is these "experts" destroy the whole Internet. I would far rather have zero S.E.O. "experts" than zero Google.

Nah, only gaslighting those still using Google Search.

I'd encourage everyone to consider alternatives. I pay for Kagi. But, there are other options, too. Opt-out.

This seems to behind a paywall :(