Unpacking Google’s Leaked API Documentation: Key Takeaways for Ecommerce SEO
Big news in the SEO world: Google’s leaked API documentation revealed over 14k ranking factors. We’ve done a deep dive into what, if anything, is new and how it might impact SEO for ecommerce websites.
Here’s what we found:
1) SiteAuthority
‘siteAuthority’ is in fact a thing. What exactly it means is still uncertain, but it’s likely a score ranking your brand or domain’s authority on a topic. So how does it impact ecommerce brands? Selling a product within your niche will likely be easier to rank for than selling a product unrelated to the rest of the content on your site and as new pages are added to your site they will borrow from this siteAuthority until they have their own.
2) NavBoost
Google has never explicitly stated that click data influences rankings, but the leak reveals NavBoost relies on user clicks to determine search result relevance. It tracks clicks over a 13-month period, focusing on first, last, and longest clicks. For ecommerce brands, this means optimizing user engagement and site navigation is crucial. Clear menus, breadcrumb navigation, and effective internal linking enhance user experience, which NavBoost favors.
3) TitlematchScore
The leaked documentation reveals that Google uses a “titlematchScore” to rank how closely a page title matches a search query. For ecommerce sites, this means its critically important to optimize title tags for your product and category pages rather than default to product names. Accurate titles that align closely with search queries can improve rankings.
4) Product Review Demotion
Content within product reviews are evaluated and low-quality product reviews can cause your pages to rank poorly. Ecommerce brands should seek out high quality reviews by setting a minimum word count and asking customers to provide specifics about their products as well as photos or videos of the product in use. High quality reviews should be featured prominently on your product pages and lower quality reviews with just star ratings or generic content should be removed or put at the end of the review block.
While there’s lots of speculation among SEOs right now about the meaning of everything contained in the leaked documentation, some details about the 14,000+ ranking factors and their exact impact may never be known. That said, it’s definitely given us a lot of ideas to test.
Contact our SEO experts today to audit your ecommerce site and develop a strategy that incorporates these latest insights from the leak and SEO best practices.
