The leaked Google documents, comprising Google’s Content API Warehouse documentation, offer invaluable insights into the world of links and their impact on SEO success. With a vast repository of 2,500 modules and 14,000 attributes, these documents illuminate crucial strategies that link builders and PR professionals should prioritize. The documents yield key takeaways, including:
Google gives value to relevant sources
Google just ignores links that are not from relevant sources or, in other words, from within content (Source page) that has no relevance to the target page. It is clear from the use of anchorMismatchDemotion in the CompressedqualitySingnals module and a webfEntities attribute in the PerDocdata module. So being relevant must be the top priority of link builders.
Local links are more valuable than foreign
The attribute, localCountryCodes, in the document stores the countries to which the link is local. So when earning links, one must choose locally relevant sites. This would also be beneficial as far as promotion of sites and sales are concerned.
Google does employ sitewide authority score
Despite denying it many times, Google employs site authority score, similar to Moz’s Domain Authority (DA). Unlike Moz’s DA, it is not link-based, but rather it is more likely based on page-level scores.
Links on newer pages have more value
Links on fresh pages are more valuable than the older ones. In the documents, a fresh content (freshdocs) is equal to high-quality links. The revelation reinstates the fact that link-builders must keep earning links and keep them updated and fresh.
Google gives more importance to homepage
In the AnchorsAnchorSource module, there is a reference to an attribute, homePageInfo. As the name vividly indicates, Google is using homepages of sites to gauge whether they fall in the category of trustworthiness or untrustworthiness. So links from trusted sites would be more valuable and vice versa.
Google pays special attentions to news sites
The documents state if a link is from a news site, Google stores a bit more information about it, and it is classified as high-quality. It does make sense when one keeps in mind that news sites fall in the category of trusted and reliable.
Links from seed sites are in the top tier
Google trusts seed sites the most, for they are spam-free and highly reliable. News sites, like The New York Times, are its example. Earning links from seed sites would be the best option for anyone, considering the fact that PageRank-Nearest Seeds has taken the place of simple and old PageRank.
Google utilizes trusted sources to judge links
The IndexingDocjoinerAnchorSpamInfo module, with a reference to trusted sources, indicates that Google judges the spammy nature of links on the basis of their linking to the number of trusted sources.
Google identifies and rejects SEO attacks by measuring link velocity
SEO attacks on sites have been the problem of the internet. The reference to The Anchor Spam Spike in the documents shows Google’s way of protecting against these attacks by identifying high volumes. Google’s plan is to identify the timeframe during which spammy links were marked, the average rate of spams identified and when the spike began.
Linked-based punishments if found guilty
Google can take strict measures against spam links by rejecting either all links coming from the same page or some of them. This could be costly if other links are not spam, but rather high-quality.
Toxic links are a reality
Again, despite the denial by Google about toxic links, a reference to BadBacklinks exists in the documentation. Google–similar to its stance regarding spam links–has decided to punish bad links.
Content of links explains context
Anchor text gives information about the context of links. But according to the leaked documents, not only anchor text, but also content surrounding a link sheds light on the context. The references, context2, fullLeftContext and fullRightContext, point to this fact. This content could merely be a way to remove any obscurity which usually surrounds links.
The documents revealed a lot about Google’s strategy regarding links. It rejects links coming from untrustworthy sources and values news-site links high. Consequently, you must be aiming to earn links from trustworthy sources, but that does not mean you should neglect quality content. Last but not the least, relevancy is the key.
