In May 2024, over 2,500 pages of internal Google API documentation, detailing more than 14,000 potential ranking attributes, became public. The google leak remains the single largest, most detailed unofficial look at Google's ranking infrastructure ever released, and...
Most SEO discussion treats Google's ranking process as one algorithm producing one ordered list. The leaked API documentation revealed something closer to a pipeline: an initial ranking, followed by a whole layer of adjustment functions applied just before results are...
Algorithm updates gaming content rankings are one of the clearest case studies in how Google's helpful content system reshaped an entire content category, and running a gaming site through the last three years of core updates has required a serious examination of what...
Navboost engagement signals are one of the ranking factors we have paid the most attention to at The Barking Deck, because the pet content niche produces some of the clearest evidence that traditional SEO signals do not fully explain competitive rankings. Sites with...
E-E-A-T personal finance is one of the most consequential applications of Google's quality evaluation framework, and running a personal finance site has given us a front-row seat to how those standards are applied in practice. The Experience, Expertise,...
Every unconfirmed dip in the SEO world gets blamed on "an update," often incorrectly. Knowing how to know which update hit your site, specifically, rather than assuming the most recently discussed one is responsible, is a diagnostic skill worth building deliberately....
The rollout finishes, you check your dashboard, and the graph is pointing the wrong way. Before panicking or making sweeping changes, work through this checklist in order, since "why did my traffic drop after core update" deserves a real diagnosis, not a guess. "Why...
In May 2024, over 2,500 pages of internal Google API documentation, detailing more than 14,000 potential ranking attributes, became public through what appears to have been an accidental exposure rather than a hack or whistleblower disclosure. This google api leak...
For years, a well-known SEO tactic involved buying placement on a large, trusted publication's coupon or review section, letting that domain's existing authority carry thin third-party content straight to the top of search results. Site reputation abuse is Google's...
Scaled content abuse gets misread constantly as "Google penalizes AI content," and that misreading causes a lot of unnecessary panic and equally unnecessary confidence. Google's actual policy, introduced in the March 2024 spam update, is more specific than that, and...
Confirm the Timeline Before Doing Anything Before making a single change, verify a core update actually rolled out during your traffic drop by checking Google's Search Status Dashboard against your own analytics timing. Core updates typically take one to four weeks to...
A manual action is when a member of Google's Search Quality team, a real person, has personally reviewed a site and applied a penalty for violating Google's guidelines. Unlike an algorithmic penalty, this is not automatic, and it always comes with a paper trail: a...
Your traffic drops, you check Search Console, and the Manual Actions report says "no issues detected." That is not good news, it just means you are dealing with an algorithmic penalty instead of a human-reviewed one, and the two require completely different recovery...
For over a decade, Google publicly denied that clicks directly influenced search rankings. Then, during the 2023 US v. Google antitrust trial, Google's own VP of Search testified under oath that a system called navboost is "one of the most important ranking signals"...
Every few months, someone in an SEO forum claims that a search quality rater personally downgraded their site, and someone else corrects them: raters cannot touch your rankings directly. Both halves of that exchange miss the more useful point. A search quality rater...
For most of its existence, Google's E-E-A-T framework was treated as a concern for health and finance sites. If you were writing about medical symptoms or investment advice, you needed credentials, named authors, and verifiable expertise. If you were writing about...
When Google confirmed the March 2026 core update on March 4th, the initial reaction across the SEO community was the usual mix of panic, speculation, and contradictory advice. Tracking tools registered volatility levels higher than any previously recorded update....