Five Questions About Google Data You Need Answers to Now

The leaked document is related to a public Google Cloud platform called Document AI Warehouse, which is used for analyzing, organizing, searching, and storing data. The 'leaked' data is claimed to be the 'internal version' of the publicly visible Document AI Warehouse documentation. However, there is no proof that the data originates from Google Search; it is only a claim made by the person who sent the data to Rand Fishkin.

It's important to keep an open mind because there is a lot about the data that is unconfirmed. For example, it is not known if this is an internal Search Team document. Taking the data as actionable SEO advice without confirmation can lead to Confirmation Bias, which is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

Ex-Googlers did not explicitly confirm that the data is internal to Google Search. They only confirmed that the data looks like it resembles internal Google information. Some of their comments include:

• 'I didn’t have access to this code when I worked there. But this certainly looks legit.'
• 'It has all the hallmarks of an internal Google API.'
• 'It’s a Java-based API. And someone spent a lot of time adhering to Google’s own internal standards for documentation and naming.'
• 'I’d need more time to be sure, but this matches internal documentation I’m familiar with.'
• 'Nothing I saw in a brief review suggests this is anything but legit.'

There are five key considerations about the leaked data:

1. The context of the leaked information is unknown. Is it Google Search related? Is it for other purposes?
2. The purpose of the data. Was the information used for actual search results? Or was it used for data management or manipulation internally?
3. Ex-Googlers did not confirm that the data is specific to Google Search. They only confirmed that it appears to come from Google.
4. Keep an open mind. If you go hunting for vindication of long-held beliefs, you will find them everywhere. This is called confirmation bias.
5. Evidence suggests that the data is related to an external-facing API for building a document warehouse.

Experts like Ryan Jones and DavidGQuaid have shared their thoughts on the leaked data:

• Ryan Jones tweeted: 'We don’t know if this is for production or for testing. My guess is it’s mostly for testing potential changes. We don’t know what’s used for web or for other verticals. Some things might only be used for a Google home or news etc. We don’t know what’s an input to a ML algo and what’s used to train against. My guess is clicks aren’t a direct input but used to train a model how to predict clickability. (Outside of trending boosts) I’m also guessing that some of these fields only apply to training data sets and not all sites. Am I saying Google didn’t lie? Not at all. But let’s examine this leak objectively and not with any preconceived bias.'

• DavidGQuaid tweeted: 'We also don’t know if this is for Google search or Google cloud document retrieval. APIs seem pick & choose – that’s not how I expect the algorithm to be run – what if an engineer wants to skip all those quality checks – this looks like I want to build a content warehouse app for my enterprise knowledge base.'