What does Google’s API leak actually reveal?

[suchona.kani.z]

Then, like a bolt from the blue, this week’s leaked API documents about Google Search appear to have spilled some of the search giant’s most closely guarded secrets. Ex-Googler Erfan Azimi is claiming responsibility for leaking Google API documents from Google’s Internal Content API Warehouse in March 2024 to GitHub—documents he subsequently shared with respected SEO stalwart Rand Fishkin, who verified their authenticity and gave his take. Likewise, technical SEO expert Mike King reviewed thousands of pages of the leaked documents and analyzed the potential impact on internal ranking features and signals.

At first, some were skeptical about the leaks, but they appear legitimate having been scrutinized by trusted figures across the SEO industry, including a number of Azimi’s fellow ex-Googlers. Then, late this el salvador leads Wednesday, Google responded with a statement of its own:

“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information. We’ve shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors that our systems weigh, while also working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”

With 2,500 pages of API documentation containing information about more than 14,000 attributes, the leak describes features that nobody outside of Google even knew existed. Worryingly, there is plenty of data in this leak that contradicts many of Google’s public statements over the last 20 years. It appears, for example, that click-through rates do indeed affect ranking, that subdomains have their own rankings, and that domain age is a ranking factor—all of which SEOs have previously speculated about only for the search giant to deny them.