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Google Search Secrets Leaked

A few days ago, a huge leak from Google Search caused quite a stir, as details on some 14 thousand ranking features and attributes were revealed. It's quite a large and dense amount of information to sift through, but it's interesting, regardless.

Google is the most influential search engine, and the way it ranks websites and articles—like ours here at HubPages—often determines their success rate. Despite Google's impact, how ranking works has always been confusing. To add to the confusion, the documents in the leak seem to reveal that many of the statements the company has made over the years, were not always accurate. 

Some interesting findings include that Google keeps a record of all changes to and versions of a page ever indexed, but only uses the last 20 changes to a URL when analyzing links. It was also revealed that they rank shorter content from 0 to 512 based on originality, and use the measurements badClicks, goodClicks, lastLongestClicks and unsquashedClicks to assess successful clicks on a page. 

If you're interested in reading further into what the leak reveals, here are some articles to start with: 

• Report: 14,000+ Google Search Ranking Features Leaked from Search Engine Roundtable
• An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them from SparkToro
• HUGE Google Search document leak reveals inner workings of ranking algorithm from Search Engine Land

There is an embedded video from the man who leaked the documents in the links above. 

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Best Practices for Callouts

The callout capsule is a great function on HubPages, allowing you to highlight specific information or facts that you don't want your readers to miss. You can also change it into a quote callout capsule to emphasize particularly memorable statements.

Here are some pointers for best practices with callout capsules. 

• Use them to highlight information that readers absolutely need to know. For example, if you're writing YMYL content about pets and there's a sign that you need to see a veterinarian as soon as possible, you can provide that information in a callout. 
• Don't use them as headers. Callout and text capsules tend to get separated by ads, and using a callout for a header might be confusing. Stick with text capsule headers and Heading 2s in the text boxes themselves. 
• Attribute your quotes! Make quotes read more professionally by attributing them as all quotes should be. If it's unknown, still note that!
• Short and sweet may be the best option. Though you can use as many characters as the callout allows, sometimes, shorter is more effective. Highlighting a large paragraph of text becomes less noteworthy than just a sentence or two of the most important information. 

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Featured Articles of the Week

These are the featured articles of the week, covering everything from the best music from the mid-80s to the centuries-long topic of reparations for Black Americans. Many thanks to everyone for their great contributions! 

• The CrimeWire:  Jonathan Luna: Maryland Prosecutor Found Dead in Another State by  Michelle Short
• Soapboxie:  Should the U.S. Pay Reparations to Black Americans? by  Martin Vidal
• ToughNickel:  How to Get a Job Contracting With the U.S. Department of Energy by  Kat Coggeshall
• Spinditty:  40 Best Singles of 1985 by  Peter Nuttall