Do you think Google's Search API documentation leak is genuine or a false flag leak by Google?

How do you feel about the latest leak of the Google Search API documentation?

I personally don't believe that this leak is genuine, but a false flag by Google to either shift the focus away from their AI issues or to spread false information about their Search algorithm criteria. There are probably many more options why Google could have an incentive to leak those documents. If the leak is genuine, the whistleblower risked his job and reputation for something that isn't uncovering any unethical activity by Google. In addition, Google's assets with insights about their algorithm are critical to their business and imo definitely highly secured. This is just my personal opinion. What do you think?

Yes, I have doubts myself.

However, some of the factors are contradicting to what they have been claiming.

Never trust these idiot, not even their single product is workable in these few years. All they do is use our data, sell it as ads.

Google becoming next FB.

Google today confirmed leak is real.

Marko T said:

Google today confirmed leak is real.

Click to expand...

Yes, the leak is real. However, this isn't the question.

Daniel from Linxact said:

Yes, the leak is real. However, this isn't the question.

Click to expand...

They are public comany, they needed to either confirm or deny. People thinking how SEO is complicated will continue to dabble no matter if everything is laid in front of them. Who cares

My thought is they weren't thorough enough in removing permissions or access to an employee who had been laid off, and they exposed it. It happened right around Layoff time. I think it's real, and If google confirmed it i believe it. As much as i think they suck, i don't think this is something they can cover up. Besides, very few people in the real world outside of SEO even give a shit about it.

Daniel from Linxact said:

How do you feel about the latest leak of the Google Search API documentation?

Click to expand...

It's definitely real. I've gone through the documentation and it's what a typical api reference looks like. There are thousands of attributes and several modules and its format is similar to what a documentation generator tool like JavaDoc or Sphinx would build.

So it's real, the documentation alone looks like hundreds to some thousands of hours of human effort which no sane company will invest in just for a "hoax". And it gains nothing really.

Daniel from Linxact said:

If the leak is genuine, the whistleblower risked his job and reputation

Click to expand...

It's not exactly a "leak" like that where some whistleblower blows out confidential information. This was basically a mistake.

Lemme tell you what this document actually is. At Google I/O event this year, they launched this product for Google Cloud. It uses the Google search api internally to "ground" the LLM when doing RAG. That search api itself (called "Content warehouse") was not supposed to have it's documentation public.

Now when releasing the api-client documentation for this product, most likely some docgen scraper tool also scraped their internal code for the search api, created the api reference for the search api and merged it with this product's api reference. These docgen tools work like internet crawling tools, following links and mentions to a certain entity, so most likely that's what happened.

Also, all of this process is automatic.

So the documentation was on GitHub for 2 months until some google employee noticed and took it down.

Daniel from Linxact said:

How do you feel about the latest leak of the Google Search API documentation?

I personally don't believe that this leak is genuine, but a false flag by Google to either shift the focus away from their AI issues or to spread false information about their Search algorithm criteria. There are probably many more options why Google could have an incentive to leak those documents. If the leak is genuine, the whistleblower risked his job and reputation for something that isn't uncovering any unethical activity by Google. In addition, Google's assets with insights about their algorithm are critical to their business and imo definitely highly secured. This is just my personal opinion. What do you think?

Click to expand...

It's not a deliberate leak.

This is not good for Google AT ALL.

And I've been personally talking with clients about engagement now for several months. It's been a pretty massive factor on page 1 for some time. It's how they're combating AI.

I've also done multiple tests with new sites comparing mass crap content with mass good content that satisfies user intent. The bad content ranks, then drops, the good content ranks, and sticks. This was NOT the case 2 years ago, I can assure you from personal experiences of having 500+ *personal* AI sites.

its genuine leak, IDK why some company will write such a long fake code/documentation.
but also, we need to understand that how much of those parameters (or whatever they call it) they actually use to rank individual pages or whole sites. The reason it, if i throw spam on some High DR/PR/DA domain's subdomain, it is still ranked higher than the original non-spammy domain. Also regarding anchor some of my clients' pages are ranking for non-topical anchors since past five years. So, IDK if all of those parameters are in use or some are deprecated. But yes, it can give insight on how google works in ranking pages/sites.

I think people believing Google so blatantly are kinda underestimating them. A subtle false flag is quite possible

Daniel from Linxact said:

How do you feel about the latest leak of the Google Search API documentation?

I personally don't believe that this leak is genuine, but a false flag by Google to either shift the focus away from their AI issues or to spread false information about their Search algorithm criteria. There are probably many more options why Google could have an incentive to leak those documents. If the leak is genuine, the whistleblower risked his job and reputation for something that isn't uncovering any unethical activity by Google. In addition, Google's assets with insights about their algorithm are critical to their business and imo definitely highly secured. This is just my personal opinion. What do you think?

Click to expand...

Probably we have all thought the same at some point. But as @tiiberius says, since this contradicts their "best practices" what would be the point of leaking such by them? At worst, it could be something made up by some fool from Moz or the like.

Time will say, but it has brought some content for experimental testing.

Loree said:

I think people believing Google so blatantly are kinda underestimating them. A subtle false flag is quite possible

Click to expand...

They've done nothing but lie to this community for 20+ years. Why does anyone place any stock in what they say publicly? It boggles my mind.

So we have now people trying to make $50 a day using the largest catalogue of information in the world thinking what we're experiencing is a massive propaganda, they created a whole lot of nonsense just to make $50 per day earners misled.

Well, that's interesting. Even more interesting than covid threads.

jimbobo2779 said:

They've done nothing but lie to this community for 20+ years. Why does anyone place any stock in what they say publicly? It boggles my mind.

Click to expand...

They say a ton of stuff that can help you but people can't read patents, papers and so on. They're publicly available on research.google.com and arxiv.

This is scientific, research oriented field.

Nobody is doing any smokes and screens just to confuse people.

If they confused people only, nobody would know what's going on and they would quit.

---

From my experience I can tell you 50k videos per day I uploaded to their site. They didn't give a fck about it for years.

They even wrote on their websites techniques used to detect all those videos once they implemented their new techniques.

Now I can upload them again! I literally just read what their papers say.

What their papers say, just do quality work and think like a businessman in short.

---

I think people believing {Google|therapists|doctors|lawyers|architects|engineers|researchers|scientists|academics} so blatantly are kinda underestimating them. A subtle false flag is quite possible.

People are rather go believe beggars on the streets, right.

---

Who the f reads some random leaks when you can just go and read patents?

I mean, leaks that aren't confirmed to be true. But if it's a true leak, then read it. But don't claim it's a conspiracy of Google.

---

Ashk and Splishsplash have explained the situation. Topic open to further discussion. Now speak about your plans.

reaaski said:

This is scientific, research oriented field.

Nobody is doing any smokes and screens just to confuse people.

Click to expand...

Are you making the claim that Google do not lie to the community about what helps with rankings? You've been here since 2013, do you genuinely think that?

jimbobo2779 said:

Are you making the claim that Google do not lie to the community about what helps with rankings? You've been here since 2013, do you genuinely think that?

Click to expand...

I was in rage that's one point. two is that I was extremely tired because I misused my computer and did something wrong.

And they lie on twitter, matt cutts is all time top liar.

But a whole leak? I can't agree that a whole leak is a lie.

How can they lie in patents? They are hard to understand, but it works better than shooting blind.

In typical posts on social media they're colorizing the reality. When you read papers and patents, it's more realistic. It's not 100% true cause some of that data is outdated and they constantly update + they mix 1000 different things and NOT ALL is public, but it's closer than that bullshit from matt cutts and confusion on forums.

I think not!!