Everyone in marketing is talking about the recent Google Search API documents leak due to a variety of implications it presents to this huge industry that is expected to grow even more with the advent of digitalization.
This means that brands, both big and small, are using their hard-earned money to invest in digital marketing initiatives like Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads, and one of the factors critical to the success of these campaigns is ranking on search engine results.
Simply put, higher search rankings = higher brand visibility = more clicks = more profit.
To say that Google is dominating this market would be a huge understatement, as it holds 91.54% of the global search engine market share, according to 2023 data collected by StatCounter.
Marketers need to know how Google Search works for them to have a shot at ranking on its search engine results page (SERP).
Now what if someone just said that they have proof that a major ranking factor (one that Google denied ever using) is vulnerable to manipulation and fraud? This is one main reason why the industry is abuzz with speculations, complaints, and outrage about the Google Search algorithm leak.
What Is Click Manipulation?
Click manipulation occurs when malicious entities pay both humans and bots to click on links to drive up their Google ranking.
It’s sort of like paying people to troll certain social media personalities or brands to bring down their reputation. The difference is that click fraud's damage is measurable in dollars.
According to a study conducted by Juniper Research, 22% of global ad spend (about $84 billion) was lost in 2023 due to ad fraud, which involves manipulating traffic or click statistics.
The click manipulation business is so lucrative that click farms openly advertise their services on social media platforms, charging about $100 monthly.
In 2019, Facebook sued developers LionMobi and JediMobi for hijacking phones through malware masquerading as an app downloadable on Google Play, which then clicked on their Facebook ads.
This allowed them to illegally profit from Facebook ad payouts. Facebook won the lawsuit in 2021, making them pay damages and banning them on Facebook and Audience Network.
What Does the Google SEO Leak Confirm?
Given that clicks can be manipulated and that this has been costing advertisers more than a pretty penny for years, what the Google SEO algorithm leak says about clickthrough rate (clicks ÷ impressions = CTR) being a ranking factor on Google Search has far-reaching implications.
“It’s like a car. Some people have different opinions on cars, but we look at sales to determine which car is better or which is the best car. And Google looks at clickthroughs,” DesignRush SEO Director Robin Fishley said on the DesignRush Podcast about the Google Search leak.
iPullRank Founder Mike King reveals how CTR being a ranking factor works, with Google defining successful clicks as whenever a user stays on a page to indicate that they found what they needed.
“What Google is doing is they’re using [clicks] to reinforce what should rank and verify what should rank. Effectively, they have a threshold of clicks that they expect for a given position, and those clicks also have to be successful,” King explains.
Meanwhile, renowned SEO expert AJ Kohn adds that “it’s essentially a clicks-over-expected-clicks model. If you’re ranking third and Google expects you to get a 12% clickthrough rate (CTR), and you’re getting a 15% CTR, you’ll probably move up."
Big brands get all the traffic because Google is making it so.
“You’re showing the people getting the most traffic more often, which tends to then isolate traffic among an elite few, which we are seeing,” Fishley says.
“So, the big publishers are getting the most clicks. Is it perpetuating that? And are we putting a middle finger up to the small publishers, which I’m guessing is the thing that people are complaining about at the moment?”
If you’re a small company doing everything you can to rank on Google Search but to no avail, only to find out that Google is making it so that high-traffic sites rank high, wouldn’t you be a little bit (or maybe a lot) mad?
Daniel Foley Carter, director at SEO Stack IO, further put the icing on Google’s already ruined cake by posing these questions.
“What people should think about is the whole logic of a machine taking a piece of content and being able to make the detriment, is that content good or bad? How can you have a machine read a piece of content and make a subjective decision that this is a good piece of content?”
Although the search results ranking is “dismal,” as Kohn put it, with brands and Google working together to inadvertently isolate small companies, Carter has this advice: focus on enhancing user experience by offering quality content to shape user behavior and encourage positive clicks.
So what should business owners do?
According to QGP founder and CEO Kosta Hristov, "A stable business should always have a multitude of marketing channels to sustain its marketing efforts. SEO shouldn’t be abandoned, because just as Google values high-traffic sites right now, they can easily (and will) change that once all the fuss is gone."
And remember, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, so take your time to put your business website on a good basis through sound strategies.
