The Google Document Leak: SEO's Secrets Revealed? (Probably Not)

On May 27th, Rand Fiskin at SparkToro broke the news that he’d been forwarded 2,500 pages worth of API (Application Programming Interface) documentation from Google’s search division. After gaining background from anonymous sources, as well as the leaker identifying himself as Erfan Aizmi, the documents were deemed authentic.

The documents pointed to 2,596 modules with 14,014 attributes (API features) that appear to come from Google’s internal “Content API Warehouse.” As mouthwatering as this sounds to SEOs who want to know the eleven herbs and spices that make up the precise signals and weights of Google’s PageRank algorithm, it falls far short of unveiling the secret formula to Coca-Cola.

Being code documentation, the information contained within the leak is highly technical in nature - and perhaps even above my paygrade.

A deep-dive by Mike King of IPullRank says:

“The leaked documentation outlines each module of the API and breaks them down into summaries, types, functions, and attributes. Most of what we’re looking at are the property definitions for various protocol buffers (or protobufs) that get accessed across the ranking systems to generate SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages – what Google shows searchers after they perform a query).”

If I’m correct, it shows people how the computers at Google access certain repositories of information or code to execute the SERP - not really how the SERP is defined itself. However, it did reveal a couple of aspects of Google’s algorithm that are worth re-evaluating.

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Clicks May Be More Important Than We Think

Google has long squashed the idea that clicks are not a ranking factor in search. According to other leaks and testimony from the US Department of Justice Anti-Trust trial, Google does employ a “implicit user experience” ranking algorithm called NavBoost, which ranks content higher based on actual clicks versus expected clicks. These signals are separated into badClicks, goodClicks, lastLongestClicks and unsquashedClicks.

Let’s say a well-edited and researched document ticks all the EEAT boxes. At the end of the day if human users prefer another piece of content, it makes sense to rank that content higher as user experience matters most. NavBoost is mentioned 84 times in the documents as a heading, which implies the algorithms contained within are important. How these work, are weighted, or tracked, etc. we cannot say.

Domain Authority - Possibly A Thing?

Google themselves have asserted they don’t use “website authority” scores, a metric designed by Moz.com, in their search rankings. The documents reveal a Compressed Quality Signal called siteAuthority() - how this is computed, measured, or implemented is anyone’s guess.

Chrome Is Used For Ranking

As mentioned before, NavBoost helps rank content based on click and user behaviour. Some user behaviour - though we aren’t privy to what extent - is harvested using cookie history, logged-in Chrome data, and pattern detection algorithms. This is known as the ChromeInTotal module.

This has been known as far back as 2016, as real-time Chrome data would be used in their RealTime Boost Signal. If you are queasy at the idea of Google tracking this much information about your browsing habits, then I encourage you to switch to Firefox.

Other Modules in the Leak

Other modules in the leak that hint at the presence of certain ranking factors are timeliness, by looking at dates in the byline (bylineDate), URL (syntacticDate) and on-page content (semanticDate); titlematchScore which suggests that site titles are a major ranking factor; determines the focus topic of a page using a comparison of page embeddings (siteRadius) to the site embeddings (siteFocusScore); and also stores domain registration information (RegistrationInfo.)

What Does This Tell Us About SEO?

On the surface - not a hell of a lot. This leak may be akin to finding out that KFC uses salt shakers, flour stations, and deep fryers in the making of their fried chicken, but not the specific ingredients nor the requisite quantities to replicate their secret recipe. It also tells us things we already knew but Google were coy over, such as Domain Authority and using Google Chrome data to reinforce their SERPs. I’ve used a gang of weasel words to report on this topic, and with good reason: we may have a few of the puzzle pieces but we have no idea if they fit together, let alone what the entire picture is supposed to look like.

It may have given some, but not total credence to long-held suspicions about how Google Search works, but nothing definitive. Though we may not be able to reproduce Coke exactly at home, it doesn’t stop people from trying.

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What is AI Hallucination in Copywriting?

Though Generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT have become commonplace in business and in copywriting, not is all as it seems. 

If you spend enough time using these tools such as ChatBots or online content generation tools, the AI may produce results that are bizarre, make no sense, or are completely made up.

This phenomenon is known as “AI Hallucination” and can prove damaging for professionals in creative industries such as content writing and copywriting. Here’s what copywriters and other creatives can do about it.

How Generative AI works

Generative AI doesn’t “think” like we do – in a nutshell, the AI manipulates numbers to reach a desired outcome.

Though the language it generates is human readable and appears fluent, it is predicated on a series of tokens broken down into probabilistic models. If one provides a prompt “Write the next word in this sentence: The cat sat on the ___?” 

The Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) will parse that phrase like a game of Family Feud – the survey – or information it is fed, will produce the response of the highest probability according to the data it can access. To do this, it lends certain words and phrases different probabilistic weights – The cat sat on the mat. “Mat” may be weighted with near 100% probability while “laptop” may be weighted with 10-15% probability.

It “learns” this through analysing millions, if not billions of words and sentences pulled from various online repositories.

The AI does not and cannot “know” the implied meaning of the words it generates in isolation, or even in sequence. It is manipulating numbers and algorithms to produce the “answer.”

What is an AI Hallucination?

Hallucination, a term from human psychology, refers to an individual seeing or hearing things that in reality, do not exist.

Likewise, AI hallucinations present incorrect, inaccurate, or logically inconsistent information as factually correct and complete information – and being confident that the returned result is indeed truthful. 

The term “AI Hallucination” has been around since at least 2018, when Google authored a paper on Neural Machine Translation, where they said “NMT systems are susceptible to producing highly pathological translations that are completely untethered from the source material.”

Many Generative AI models are trained to provide answers at almost “any cost.” Given an AI is plugged into vast reservoirs of already-existing information at all times, it is hard to understand how an AI can “not know” a given answer when asked a straightforward question. Therefore, it simply produces something, rather than nothing.

In fact, OpenAI disclaims hallucinations by warning users that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.”

Other terms for AI hallucination are “confabulation” which can appear in AI-generated video, upscaling, images, or audio as weird artifacts or odd interpretations of prompts.

Common types of AI hallucinations

The most common types of AI hallucinations that can creep into copy are factual errors or inconsistencies in the output.

The most famous example is from February of 2023. Google’s Generative AI Bard stated that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope took the very first pictures of a planet from outside our solar system.

Astronomers quickly pointed out that this was incorrect.

It can also contradict itself and not be “aware” of the contradiction. You may ask the AI to write a 26-word poem with each word starting with a corresponding letter of the alphabet, and it returns 25 words or 27 words. Even when “challenged” it may insist that the output conforms to what the prompt has asked.

Other (more fun) hallucinations are when the AI goes completely off the rails and returns gibberish or nonsensical data. You may ask for an explanation of the water cycle, and it goes off on a tangent about 80s horror films. In French.

This can all happen due to the quality of data being collected, how it generates responses, how well a prompt is engineered, and plain old human error in the form of bugs.

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AI hallucinations and copywriting or content writing

With the right prompts and skill, a LLM or Generative AI can produce massive amounts of content at scale.

However, the downside is, at least for the moment, is that AI generated content lacks the “Experience” ingredient in Google’s page ranking factor model, known as E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.)

If a Generative AI “hallucinates” once or twice per 1,000 words, this can make even the most well-intentioned content run afoul of Google’s E-E-A-T parameters. 

If a human website copywriter cannot determine whether the AI has hallucinated or not (e.g. through a lack of expertise on the topic being covered) it can wreak havoc not only for their SEO efforts but also for productivity. 

Copywriters and editors will need to redline and fact-check each claim a Generative AI has made. For shorter copy and content (under 1000w), there is a reasonable chance that writing the post oneself would take less time than crafting prompts and checking facts.

How to prevent AI hallucinations

Though we can’t totally stop an AI from hallucinating, we can take steps to mitigate the risk of hallucinations occurring. This can come from writing better prompts or feeding it higher quality information. 

Pre-train the AI

The “PT” in GPT means “pre-trained.” We may assume that a GPT is adept in all things but feeding it relevant and contemporary data first can help limit factual errors. These may come into play by asking a GPT to read through several hand-picked sources or databases before generating text.

Give it a role to play

Image generative AI such as DALL-E and Midjourney are called upon to “Imagine” images based on prompts; and GPTs can be given roles to play which can narrow its focus to certain types of data. For example, if you want an expert to determine whether the James Webb Telescope did indeed see an extra-solar planet, you can ask it:

You are an astronomer who works at NASA and concentrates on reading telemetry from the James Webb Telescope. Has the telescope ever seen a planet outside our solar system?

Exclude certain answers

Just like the dark days of the pre-Google internet, search operators were crucial to find relevant information. If you wanted to look up “bicycles” you may have had to Ask Jeeves (literally) “Bicycles NOT motorcycles”, which would exclude motorcycles from your results.

This could take the form of:

Provide a list of islands in the South Pacific which exist in the real world. Exclude all fictional mentions and return what can be seen on a contemporary (2010s onwards) map. 

Forgive its trespasses

If the GPT has racked its neural networks and databases and come up with nothing, let it know that that is also an acceptable answer.

Does nothing unreal exist? If you do not know, say, “I don’t know.”

Copywriters: trust, but verify

As of 2023, hallucination is part and parcel of using Generative AI. As a copywriter or content writer who may look to GPTs for ideas, long-form content generation, or productivity improvements, we need to rely on the old political maxim: trust but verify.

There’s a high probability that the GPT output is factually correct, but we also need to cross-check with third-party reputable sources before publishing; lest you contribute to spreading misinformation unwittingly.

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Can you have your Google cake and EEAT it too? (Flying Solo)

Content is king, right? I mean, I am a loyal subject to it as a copywriter, supplicating before its wordy throne, feeding it fine morsels of verbiage and sentences crafted to perfection to satisfy its ever-growing hunger, I write at Flying Solo.

How To Use Email Marketing To Increase Black Friday Sales

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, retail sales in November 2022 increased 7.7% year on year, with a total retail trade turnover of $35.9 billion. Whether a sale was at a till or on a checkout page, email marketing is still a strong force to pushing people to buying gifts for themselves - and perhaps for others!

If you have a healthy email marketing list, how can you leverage it to increase your Black Friday or Christmas sales?

Create a Content Calendar

The first step toward a successful holiday sales campaign is creating a content calendar. This doesn’t just have to encompass your potential email marketing offers or newsletters, but tie into your social media and content marketing as a whole.

If you’re focusing on a certain product for a week, your strategy should be to push it through all your channels. Make sure you leave some flexibility for flash sales, opportunities that come your way (discounted lines, for example), and of course, crisis communications if things go wrong.

It’s never too early to push holiday sales - commercial media platform Criteo says that first time buyers will check out an online store 41 days before making a potential purchase on Black Friday.

Segment, Personalise, Repeat

Segmentation and personalisation is the “secret ingredient” to encourage open rate and sales. CampaignMonitor says that personalising subject lines can lead to an 8x improvement in click-throughs and 6x improvement in transaction rates.

Segmenting your email list into active users, lapsed users, etc. can also mean targeting campaigns at these demographics. You can lure lapsed users who have signed up and never purchased with a special discount offer; your most enthusiastic shoppers could be incentivised with buy one, get one free offers.

As I’ve mentioned previously, email marketing should feel as if that email is written just for them and no one else.

Add Value With Every Email

You don’t have to offer a discount with every email you send out. There are plenty of ways to add value to someone’s inbox without sacrificing your bottom line. One great way to add value is offering a “holiday gift guide” - based on the segmentation and personalisation discussed earlier - and hit points that you know will resonate with that audience.

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• Gifts for him/her (directed at the opposite)

• Gifts on a budget - using language like “Gifts under $50”

• Gifts for people with certain hobbies or interests

• Gifts for kids or gifts for mum and dad

• Gifts for those looking to splurge

You can also build your email list by offering instant discounts, access to early sales coupons or free shipping just for signing up.

Don’t simply bombard your audience with calls to buy something - planting seeds can prove just as valuable!

Get In The Festive Spirit

As I was writing this blog post, I got an email from MOO, an online business stationery and card shop, that was advertising “Fresh Festive Ideas.” I don’t even own a Christmas tree (much to the chagrin of any woman I know) but I do know many people love Christmas and the holiday season. Using Christmas emojis (in fact, using emojis can dramatically increase open rates) Incorporating that into your messaging can increase engagement and rapport with your brand. You may cringe at a Christmas pun as a subject line, but some people find it charming! (I don’t know who. Don’t ask.)

Use Automation and SMS

If you have a robust email marketing system, you should set up emails for different user scenarios such as abandoned carts, missed emails, and flash sales. Many people (myself included) will sign up for an email list, purposely abandon a cart and see if the store sends me a discount to entice me back! You should have email and copy ready to go for every eventuality, including flash sales, buy one, get one free offers, limited time offers, and so on. Since most of us will be reading these offers on our smartphones, using SMS marketing can also help drive engagement and traffic to your site.

Make Sales Seamless

If you have a special sale targeting a segment of your email list, the sales page should be as seamless as possible. That means links should open to the gifts below $50; or have their subscriber discount already applied in a cart; whatever it takes to make the sale as easy as possible for the buyer.

There’s nothing worse than coming across a vague landing page that’s trying to appeal to everyone yet functions for almost no one.

By following some simple steps, you too can rake in a sales bonanza this Black Friday and Christmas!

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How To Create a Winning SEO Keyword Strategy For Your Business

Google and search engines are always on the look out to optimise their results for the end user. It’s why they so frequently change their algorithms. In 2018 they “improved” their PageRank and ranking signals algorithm over 3,000 times; in the age where AI is taking over more and more, it could be refining itself in ways we don’t even see.

If your business site has been reigning supreme over Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for years, you could find yourself in the unenviable position of being on the wrong side of an algorithm update, losing hard-won rankings and positions.

Having a strong keyword strategy that keeps up with Google and new trends can help your business navigate the wild world of SEO without having to start from square one.

WHAT IS A SEO KEYWORD STRATEGY?

Though it can be confused with keyword research, a keyword strategy goes a step further than mere keyword research. Intuitively, we know what keywords we want to target in searches. If we own a plumbing business, we would type in “plumbers near me” or “gas plumber Melbourne” to Google and grab the first few autocomplete results, incorporating this into our on-page SEO copy.

A keyword strategy goes deeper. Instead of a scattergun approach, an SEO Keyword Strategist would identify the cost/benefit ratio for chasing certain keywords or keyphrases, see what keywords could drive relevant traffic to your site, identify new opportunities, and help structure your content into topic clusters. A strategic approach can also temper expectations around rankings and growth. Highly competitive keywords may be out of reach for many small businesses.

However a laser-focused strategy that also includes less competitive or high-intent keywords could drive more qualified leads to your site. This often means a higher return on investment than looking for raw volume. Many users who end up at your site may be “tyre kicking” and bouncing off without any conversion or interaction. The strategy also needs to consider this aspect of user behaviour.

Benchmarking Performance

At the very least, you should have some kind of analytics set up to gauge what incoming search terms your site is ranking for at any given moment. You should be using Google Analytics or Google Search Console at the minimum.

Signing up for free versions of Ahrefs or SEMRush can give you general overviews of how your site is ranking in terms of keyword authority and positioning among competitors. At the very least, you need to set a baseline from which to work with.

Set SMART Goals

With any strategy, be it crossing the Ardennes or carving out 10% greater market share, it needs an identifiable goal. These should be SMART:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Actionable

• Relevant

• Timely

The specific goal a business could set are improving rankings for a certain topic or keyword cluster to the first page within six months. To use our plumber, this may be “blocked sinks/drains/grease traps” to the first page in that time period. These could be refined into key performance indicators for Top 3 rankings or Top 4-10 rankings, for example. For a list of SEO KPIs every business should track, SEMRush has a great guide here.

Topics - The New SEO Keyword?

As you may be aware, Google uses the E-E-A-T ranking signal to sort relevant pages and display them in Search Engine results. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This rings especially true for businesses that trade in “money or your life” sectors such as financial advice or medical treatment. Instead of focusing on individual keywords or phrases, a good SEO keyword strategy will incorporate content and backlinking efforts on becoming trusted expert authorities on topics.

Our plumber may want to target keywords around plumbing, but what other topics are relevant to would-be searchers? How to unclog drains can also relate to general home maintenance; the latter of which could be a topic cluster. The high-level topic then informs what other secondary keywords you could be targeting underneath to support your strategy.

Creating topic pages also feeds into any good SEO content strategy, which also comprises how you lay out your pages and sitemap. Certain pillar pages may contain basic information on a given topic (plumbing maintenance) and supporting pages with their own topics (how to stop drains from running slowly) which you can then link to.

Remember: this topical content need not be written: it could be video content, podcasts, interactives, and social media content.

Keyword Difficulty vs. Payoff

Every keyword has metrics that you need to look at such as search volume and keyword difficulty. Search volume shows how often a search is run (usually a rough estimate) and keyword difficulty is the probability of entering the “race” for ranking high and actually pulling it off.

Sites or pages with high domain authority, referring domains, and page authority are harder to knock off the perch than lower-hanging fruit. The higher the difficulty, the better or more relevant your content has to become, which can take a lot of time and effort (and even then, it may not pay off.)

You will have to evaluate how much effort you wish to funnel into certain keywords or perhaps look for “easy target” keywords that you can target for quick and easy wins. (which Backlinko goes into detail with here.) How you prioritise high difficulty vs. low difficulty keywords or topics is a matter for your business - but the strategy itself should give you insights into what will work best to achieve your ultimate goal.

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SEO KEYWORD STRATEGY IS ALSO Content Strategy

Your topics and keywords will be centered around content - but your keywords for content shouldn’t be placed “just anywhere.” They too should be laid out in a strategic way.

A strategic approach must include direction for topics, blog or page posting frequency, and where a potential customer could potentially enter your sales funnel when searching for that keyword or phrase.

The top-of-the-funnel often sends larger traffic levels with a lower intent to purchase or convert, whereas the bottom-of-the-funnel typically sends lower traffic volumes with a higher intent. Though you may have less traffic coming through at the bottom-of-the-funnel, the payoff is much higher than if you simply ignored that keyword completely.

Tracking and Refinement

It’s vital that you conduct regular tracking and reporting on progress towards your goals.

Plans can change and the methods you employ to can and might shift halfway through. That's normal, and it's frequently what distinguishes a good plan from a great strategy. 

Checking in on your KPIs at least monthly ensures that you are constantly aware of how near you are to meeting your objectives, that you can communicate updates with other stakeholders and that you have confidence that things are heading in the right direction and that your SEO Keyword Strategy is set up for success.

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