I get this is the go-to response now, for good reason, but there isn’t really anything too shady going on with this particular case. This is more about them trying to keep SEOs from figuring out how they rank things so they can’t pollute the search results even more.
Every comment is shitting on Google but here is the what the SEO expert said about the leak when it was presented to them:
This person’s sole aim appeared quite aligned with my own: to hold Google accountable for public statements that conflict with private conversations and leaked documentation, and to bring greater transparency to the field of search marketing. And they believed that, despite my years removed from SEO, I was the best person to share this publicly.
This is entirely about advertising. The people that care about this documentation are SEO bastards that are polluting the internet, and this information only gives them more tools to do that.
Oh FFS. Hadn’t realized that implication yet. I fucking hate SEO internet polluters.
I suppose on the bright side maybe, between this and the garbage showing from their AI search, they’ll actually dedicate the necessary resources to make their search usable.
As I just noted on another response, mostly it was that I came up with a delicious turn of phrase and couldn’t not post it. And yes, while broadly I think that Google deserves every bit of shit that’s thrown their way and more - that they could vanish from the face of the Earth tomorrow and the internet could only benefit - this particular incident really isn’t a good example.
Forgive me for not reading all 2500 documents, but I haven’t heard anything to suggest there was a bunch of sinister stuff in there – and there’s nothing implicitly evil about having docs leaked.
The main takeaway is that Google uses Chrome to collect data on what search results people click on and how long they spend on those pages. They then use that data to rank search results.
Ah, I see. That makes sense, but to be fair I think that was expected. I suspect they also pull the same data from every page where adsense is embedded regardless of browser, e.g., and every other company out there is aggregating the same sort of data every possible place they can get it from (shared sign ins, etc etc)
Edit: It’s definitely a particularly bad look when there are several things in there that representatives for Google have apparently lied about over the years.
I have to admit that I was so pleased with that turn of phrase when it came to me that I went ahead and posted it in spite of the fact that this specific incident doesn’t appear to be a good example.
It’s really sort of amazing how few years it took to go from “Do no evil” to “Don’t even bother pretending not to.”
I get this is the go-to response now, for good reason, but there isn’t really anything too shady going on with this particular case. This is more about them trying to keep SEOs from figuring out how they rank things so they can’t pollute the search results even more.
Every comment is shitting on Google but here is the what the SEO expert said about the leak when it was presented to them:
This is entirely about advertising. The people that care about this documentation are SEO bastards that are polluting the internet, and this information only gives them more tools to do that.
Oh FFS. Hadn’t realized that implication yet. I fucking hate SEO internet polluters.
I suppose on the bright side maybe, between this and the garbage showing from their AI search, they’ll actually dedicate the necessary resources to make their search usable.
Next to upvoting, I’m just writing this to potentially get your comment ranked higher for this post.
Stuffing this comment with keywords in order to rank his comment higher. Upvoting, writing, ranking.
As I just noted on another response, mostly it was that I came up with a delicious turn of phrase and couldn’t not post it. And yes, while broadly I think that Google deserves every bit of shit that’s thrown their way and more - that they could vanish from the face of the Earth tomorrow and the internet could only benefit - this particular incident really isn’t a good example.
Forgive me for not reading all 2500 documents, but I haven’t heard anything to suggest there was a bunch of sinister stuff in there – and there’s nothing implicitly evil about having docs leaked.
The main takeaway is that Google uses Chrome to collect data on what search results people click on and how long they spend on those pages. They then use that data to rank search results.
Ah, I see. That makes sense, but to be fair I think that was expected. I suspect they also pull the same data from every page where adsense is embedded regardless of browser, e.g., and every other company out there is aggregating the same sort of data every possible place they can get it from (shared sign ins, etc etc)
Edit: It’s definitely a particularly bad look when there are several things in there that representatives for Google have apparently lied about over the years.
I have to admit that I was so pleased with that turn of phrase when it came to me that I went ahead and posted it in spite of the fact that this specific incident doesn’t appear to be a good example.
That feels remarkably intellectually honest. I doubt if I would have replied again in that case, so I don’t know why anyone was downvoting this