Marketers of the Universe: A digital marketing podcast

Unpacking the Google SEO leaks, and effective crisis communication

• Brew Digital • Season 1 • Episode 15

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First up, everyone, stay calm! Haydn's absence is only temporary, and it is for an exceptionally good reason!

In this episode of Marketers of the Universe, we are looking at the drama surrounding the Google SEO leak, and, in a bout of serendipity, we're also talking about crisis management.

Starting with the leaks, SEO managers Jason Morris and ShinRoo Chao dissect the contents of the documents and offer their expert opinions on whether this is a game-changer or just business as usual.

Mark then hosts a panel with social media manager Debbie Gacutan, account manager Ciaran O'Neill, and Head of Digital Marketing Rich Harper to discuss crisis management, and what to do when it hits the fan.

Further reading
The future of search is AI, but who will really benefit from it?

Meet Ciaran O'Neill, Account Manager at Brew Digital

Q&A with Mark Bundle

Q&A with Rich Harper

Q&A with Debbie Gacutan

Send us a text

Marketers of the Universe is brought to you by the clever folks at Brew Digital. We’re not your typical digital marketing agency; using an innovative approach to decision-making and collaboration, we help you create an impactful digital strategy that actually delivers results for your business.

See what we can do for you at brewdigital.com


Jason Morris:

Hey, Haydn was better than this. Tom, I'm joking. I love you.

Tom Inniss:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Marketers of the Universe. Those of you with astute ears will note that I am not Hayden Woods-Williams. I am Tom Illis, the copywriter for Brew Digital. Dears will note that I am not Hayden Woods-Williams. I am Tom Innes, the copywriter for Brew Digital. Hayden is currently on paternity leave and we wish him all the best.

Tom Inniss:

Today's episode we're going to be looking at the Google SEO leaks that happened recently and we're going to be asking our own SEO Haydn experts what they actually mean for the industry. Following that, mark Bundle will be managing a panel talking about crisis management and what you should do if something goes wrong. But first let's dive into those Google SEO leaks.

Tom Inniss:

So I'm very excited to be joined by Jason and Shinru, who are two experts at Brew Digital in the area of SEO, and we're going to be talking today about what the massive Google SEO leaks mean for the industry. Firstly, thank you both for joining me. I'm happy to open this out to the floor, but, to kick things off, could you explain where these leaks came from and what they were about?

ShinRoo Chao:

So basically there are like thousands of documents kind of not like 100% confirmed by Google, but it's confirmed Google's internal content API warehouse. They were released, like on GitHub on March 13th and people think it's kind of absurdly, kind of pushed to the repository but it's just kind of discovered by a bot, a co-bot called YoshiCobot. So this document was first shared with Rand Fishkin, so he's the co-founder of SpotToro and Moz, the famous Moz, and the leaked document actually relates to a public Google Cloud platform and this platform actually used to analyze, organize or search store data organize our search store data. So Fishkin mentioned he did contact with 3S Google to confirm if the document was from Google. But you know they're not really confident. It's an internal document from Google. But they just confirmed they look like the document from from Google, but they just confirmed they lose the document from internal Google information.

Tom Inniss:

Yeah, I think Google have now confirmed that the details inside the document are legitimate, but they did warn that some of it is out of date and not to take it out of context, which could be more around crisis management at this point, which we'll be talking about a little bit later but why are these leaks so significant? Jason, I'm going to come to you.

Jason Morris:

Well, I don't think they're too significant, to be honest. So it's a very inside overview of how Google operates and all the factors that it considers, which were there were quite a few I think it was 14,000 altogether from this report but the overall takeaway is, yeah, keeping it human, keeping it authoritative, so links matter. And yeah, word count was quite a big one, so content, velocity and how people read your pages, etc. So just very human behavior orientated metrics.

Tom Inniss:

They were the, the most important ones um, I saw in the leak that there was some stuff around user behavior and I know that google had previously said that clicks didn't matter. Obviously, google run or oversee the chrome browser, so there is almost an incentive for them to be tracking user behavior, although they have said in the past that they haven't. Do you think that google have been using that data, and or do you think it erodes trust in google that that sort of behavior metrics was even mentioned in the document?

Jason Morris:

yeah, so clicks were. They have historically been um a point of reference for analytics. So you get this amount of clicks to your website. But now they've changed with GA4 that's come in. They now call it sessions. So it's how you engage with the website on that click rather than just a click, and if you bounce off.

Tom Inniss:

Shinri, do you have anything to add to that?

ShinRoo Chao:

Just back to the previous. So so adjacent thing is not significant and I also think it's actually nothing really new in that document. It's significant just because the Google search is kind of very secretive, very close-guarded, kind of a box in the world. So everyone wants to have a peek about the ranking algorithm so they can do whatever they can to reach the number one ranking. And definitely it's not just about the click-centric user signal they use. There's a lot of different things in the document being mentioned. You know there's like like just mentioned this above more than 14k attributes in our api feature. So why did they create that attribute? They they definitely use it, just because we don't know when they're using it or if it's really like a ranking factor they are using at the moment. So it's definitely quite interesting to see what's in that document. And other thing they also previously mentioned by those Google representatives say backlink doesn't matter. It's not that important to claim those signals from backlink building to either on the relevant website or like high domain, a high authority website.

Jason Morris:

Google relies quite heavily still on authority. So when other websites reference you and link back to you, that's what they go on in a big way, so they don't have time to actually review all of your content and your word count and what you've got going on. They go on trust and authority with the internet. So, yeah, that's still a big one. Is backlinks and presence online. Is backlinks and presence online?

ShinRoo Chao:

Yeah, I remember I saw, like John Miller, one of the Google representatives, actually in 2020, he just posted it was Twitter.

Tom Inniss:

now it's X just saying they don't use Google, doesn't use authority score or something, but a few years later, but a few years later, a few years later, we use kind of authority, think no, but it doesn't call authority so there's been a number of instances where google have said we don't use this or this hasn't got any play in how the search rankings are organized and then either they come later on and say actually it is or they do something that's very similar and call it a different name just so they can get around it.

Tom Inniss:

I mean one has to wonder, if they are focusing on authority and everything else, why they have got 14 000 different signals that they would pull. That's a lot of work to put into something that they're not necessarily using. I mean you can understand. Maybe they're thinking we can roll out in the future, but equally 14,000, it's a lot. So what does this mean for the industry going forward? Google have said that these documents are now somewhat out of date and we are seeing them roll out new generative search experiences. Has this document eroded any trust in the industry?

ShinRoo Chao:

I think, because, like you say, google actually confirmed this document, but they say it's out of date and they're not really confident which attributes, which is like the factor, they use. I think it's important just kind of keep an open mind about this data because it contains a lot of unconventional facts. So, for example, we don't know if it's like the current ranking algorithm you know, current ranking algorithm that they use, or whether they use for to reading, kind of update it. So it's probably not really a good idea just to leave everything, but it's also definitely a good place to check, maybe what has been used before or even what could be reused in the future. But, however, seo is always about testing and learning. So maybe some experiment we can take, for example, about the click metric. So maybe we can.

ShinRoo Chao:

When we try to promote our blog post in an email, we can just like don't put the whole article, definitely a call to action button back to the website and see how that works. And also another thing about the link building and digital PR. In the document it says definitely there's more value in the big name like big news website. They bring more value for the link building. So maybe we can definitely test to see what's the difference to build a backlink on the small website and from a high authority big news website and see what's the differences. Another thing is, like it was mentioned by Google representative, like the page title is not that important, but actually in the document it shows, the page title seems to be an important factor to help the user identify, or even help the search engine to identify, what's the top page voice about from that content. So definitely there's something we can start doing some experiment on it and see how it works.

Tom Inniss:

Before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask does this data leak and this sort of inference that perhaps Google's not being wholly honest with how their algorithm works, does it present any opportunities for other search engines to exploit this situation? Are we going to see like an actual rise in bing, or is duck duck go gonna suddenly have relevance? Or maybe yahoo will come back, who knows? But do you think that these search engines are going to benefit from this leak or is it still going to be Google's world?

Jason Morris:

I would say no, it's not really a leak. It's not like a cheat sheet on how to rank on Google. It's, yeah, just cementing that a human element is what is needed, so other search engines can do the same.

ShinRoo Chao:

Yeah, I agree. I think it's not just because of the data leak to change the market share for the search engine, but maybe in the next decade or two decades we never know because, for example, just imagine 25 years ago what search engine we use to search things. For me it's Yahoo and then Google. So we never know. Maybe one of the search engines a small search engine at the moment, will kind of overtake Google's smart share in the future, overtake Google's margin sharing solution?

Tom Inniss:

Certainly possible. Google seem keen on wrecking all of the trust that they had in their search results. When they're now telling people to put glue on pizza and go and eat rocks, that's another topic, tom.

Jason Morris:

I'm floated on that stuff.

Tom Inniss:

Very keen to explore it at some point. The sort of overwhelming sense I'm getting from both of you is that you feel this leak is a bit of a nothing burger. So is there any changes that SEO experts or companies who manage their own SEO need to take in response to this leak, or is it just business as usual?

Jason Morris:

I would say business as usual. Yeah, the interesting thing is you can yeah, maybe a local mechanic or a butcher around the corner and they can update the content on their website and add content. They will actually start ranking higher because it's more natural. So this is what google favors now and this is where the movement into ai is going. It's more conversational, it's more, uh, long-term keywords. It's not about focusing on a specific topics, but having conversation.

ShinRoo Chao:

So, yeah, it's definitely an interesting time, but no, no cheat sheet, unfortunately yeah, I think, just like just mentioned about ai, definitely is a hot topic at the moment, not just for search engine but for whole track industry and for the company or for the business who would like to do ACO. Probably not much change actually. Just follow the so-called ACO best practice we can see in the document. There's all relevant things we have been doing so far in ACO practice. But, like I say, always test and learn. So if you have an adventure heart, you can do some experiments on it and just pick one element and then just go for it.

Tom Inniss:

Thank you, both of you. So any marketers out there, business as usual. Essentially, if you've already been doing great SEO, then carry on, and if you haven't, maybe check out the Brew Digital Resource Hub, where we have lots of guides on SEO. And if you like even more help, then we are always on hand. Just drop us an email and we would be happy to chat about your SEO needs. Thanks again to Jason and Shinru, and now we'll hand over to Mark Bundle, senior Email Manager, to talk about crisis management.

Mark Bundle:

Today we are going to be talking about crisis management, what to do when it hits the fan, as it frequently does. On the panel today we have Debbie, who is our Senior Social Media Manager here at Brew Digital, kieran O'Neill, our Account Manager, and Rick Sharper, who is our Head of Digital Marketing Services and our boss. So first things first I'm going to open this one up to the floor what constitutes a crisis? We'll maybe just go from this is a bit of a problem to a full-blown ah.

Ciaran O'Neill :

we need to sort this out. Well, simple terms, it's an event, or more of it, just one event that just creates a huge disturbance for the business in question. They tend to be sudden and they are mostly very difficult or present a danger to the business or company. So yeah, decisions have to be taken quickly.

Mark Bundle:

Debbie, that's what you were about to tell me.

Debbie Gacutan :

Yeah, no, a crisis to me, and I have to dig deep into my social media route. It's something that also involves the opinion of your audience, of your customers, how your brand is perceived. I think that you know that you have.

Rich Harper:

You know that you have a crisis on hand when you feel that backlash knocking on the door yeah, um, I was just going to jump in a crisis it can be big or it can be small, and I think as well. It depends on how you want to deal with it. And doing some research before this section, I saw a really nice analogy of crisis being likened to a fire, and that fire can start small and then it can quickly turn into something big, like a forest fire. Or you could take away one of the elements that fuels a fire and you could quickly extinguish it, but ultimately, if that fire starts, you've got the beginning of the crisis, no matter how big or small it begins with.

Mark Bundle:

I suppose that analogy is apt and that is why they call it firefighting Riggs. I'm going to stay with you because you owned your own agency previously, before working at Breed Digital From that time. Are there any examples of crises that went particularly well and more funny, but anyway they went particularly badly.

Rich Harper:

I owned an agency at the time of possibly one of the biggest global crises that have happened, certainly in my lifetime, in the C word. Covid and the agency I owned specialised at the time in the events industry. So, as you can imagine, when COVID hit, events was badly struck almost instantly and I think I remember joking with a couple of staff saying we saw the news and it was in China and we were kind of questioning how serious this thing was. I can say, probably within two, three weeks, 85 of the retainers I had had gone overnight. So from a crisis perspective, but it wasn't a crisis in the sense you know, sometimes people see crises within business as something of their own creation. You know, an ad campaign gone wrong, um, a data breach, you know these sorts of things.

Rich Harper:

In this case, it was a crisis that was of not of our own doing, but certainly a crisis that we had to deal with and a few sleepless nights and lots of um emergency calls with my business partner on um money and finances and how we were going to get through it.

Rich Harper:

I think what we had to do in order to survive was to pivot change our tactics, move really quickly into almost putting a stop to the services that we were doing and jumping in. You know, at the time things like digital events were sitting on Zoom. Now, zoom prior to COVID was probably not the biggest platform. It certainly wasn't something that we used every day. It soon became something that we used every day and it soon became pivotal in the event space, because everything we did from then onwards was was in the digital um route and then for the at least the next 18 months, that was what we did. Uh, words of our clients driving um their sales through through webinars, through zoom meetings, that sort of thing. So it's about just thinking on your feet. I think that crisis, if there was any positive that we could take out of it, was it would be that how quickly can you evolve um and, if you have to, how quickly can you?

Mark Bundle:

change covid very much an existential crisis. It's like a whole new level of crisis, particularly when it came to the events industry. Obviously, just being banned from meeting up kind of crucial to a blocking a company that helps people meet up and just a quick shout out there for the fact that the entire rest of the group is sharing in chat that as soon as Rich said Pever, all of us in our heads pictured three people trying to move a sofa around a corner. One of those. If you know references, debbie, obviously you're in charge of Bruce, social media. Particularly in a crisis, social media comes really to the forefront. It is where, if the crisis has gone external, it is where those people are going to try and contact the company. How do you handle that?

Debbie Gacutan :

Oh my God, how do I handle that, mark? Well, I think one thing that is very crucial for any brands is to actually already, before you need to plan this ahead and not wait for a crisis to happen. That's my number one tip for any brands. The best way to go about it is to already line up a task force, identify who are the stakeholders that need to be part of the conversation in terms of like. What is our response to a particular crisis, whether it is external, on what different levels it is, who are the people to like, confirm it, who are the people to confirm it and who are the people that will push it out?

Debbie Gacutan :

Because one of the things that I think as a common mistake that I see brands take is that they take too long to respond, and sometimes the amount of time that you take too long to respond, you actually put yourself in the line of fire longer.

Debbie Gacutan :

A good example for this is when Black Lives Matter movement happened in the US. I was working for an international brand at that time. It's in higher education and we had to act fast because it was pretty much as one of the directors at that time put it it's either you are in the right side of history or the wrong side, and we acted quite fast. We changed a lot of things. We put out an external message um, immediately, um, and the response within our community and potential you know, students that would want to join us, um was pretty good, whereas the rest of brands got kind of like blacklisted, as like keeping quiet or they weren't really supporting black brands or black communities and so on. So I think like that's one thing for you to think about, so that when something does happen, you already have a plan in place so not being quick enough to address the crisis can itself be a crisis.

Mark Bundle:

Kieran, are there any other kind of factors that you think are like a common pitfall? I guess?

Ciaran O'Neill :

Debbie's kind of smashed it out, to be fair. But yeah, it's social media a blessing or a curse? I would say it's. Yeah, it is that double-edged sword. Even in times of crisis, you can have a more personalized and authentic kind of conversation, which you know removed some of the formalities that you would get with a press release or or so on, and it means that your stakeholder or your customers or so on, they'll feel, um, they feel that it's a more transparent conversation. There is the flip side of you do not control or fully manage the narrative like you would with a press release or a press conference, which means that a company has what's known as a privileged voice, as in it's the one that gets heard, but actually you have, overall, less control over social media messages. And the worst thing is is that your the information that you put out there in good faith with a strategy and a plan, can still be misinterpreted I think that's why companies and you know make sure you assign an appropriate spokesperson.

Rich Harper:

But act with like honesty and integrity, because the truth will always come out and if you are going to make announcements around that crisis in terms of steps you're going to do to to mitigate that in the future, make sure that you are implementing those steps and that they are publicly visible. I think there's a lot of time when people come out and they say what they want to say in the heat of the moment and then hope that it might go away. But actually, if your CEO is going to come out and write a heartfelt letter to say we're sorry, but then do nothing about it in the future, then there's a big issue there. So I think, act of honesty and integrity. Make sure you publicly play out any steps that you're going to implement to mitigate future crisis I think this lends as well to um.

Debbie Gacutan :

You know there are big brands with massive pr teams behind them that can help you craft like a beautiful message to mitigate a crisis, but but if you are a small brand, you don't necessarily have those resources. Like, what do you do? I think, as to what Rich said, it really boils down to being authentic and genuine. I cannot point out a small brand yet because I guess they haven't made that much mistakes. But I don't know if you guys remember, but when Pepsi had that commercial with Kendall Jenner, which is now the infamous, worst ad ever created and it was a massive backlash because I don't know why Pepsi thought that Kendall Jenner would be the best spokesperson for an ad that, pretty much you know, interpreted somebody who is woke and like, all of a sudden, you know we have Kendall Jenner joining a march for unity and peace.

Debbie Gacutan :

I think that the way that Pepsi handled it was pretty. They had the pretty positive response because they put it out, put it out there as plain as it gets. As you know, we planned this, but we clearly missed the mark. That's it and I think like that's how I think some brands do well and I think some brands try to defend themselves too much, and I think that's when you kind of, like you know, bury yourselves even more yeah, that pepsi ad as well.

Rich Harper:

Pepsi came out of that fine because they instantly addressed, they pulled the ad, they said sorry, they said that the idea behind it was to promote unity and peace. But they clearly missed the mark and everything was kind of fine. They moved on very much at all. And there still is issues surrounding that pepsi ad. With her like when she joins, like the black lives matters, protests and stuff like that there was instant backlash going. Why don't you just go and find a can of pepsi and hand it out you have a boat or solve all your problems. Like she came out of it really bad because she didn't address anything. She just stayed silent and hoped that it would just go away. Um, so there's two from the same kind of the same campaign there, two different ways of handling and if one came out, fine, one really. And it might be that they're a brand and they moved on and as a celebrity it's harder to change that perception, but certainly ignoring it didn't help her in any stretch of the imagination.

Rich Harper:

However, on top of that, sometimes in crises there is a time when you can remain silent If it's small enough. Actually, creating more noise around an issue could then amplify it when actually it could be dealt with very quickly and put out before many people know about it. So conflicting statements there, but when a crisis arises, just take a moment to reflect and notice. What is the scale of this? Is it something that's affected a few people that we can deal with quickly and efficiently not in the public eye, and then it will go away? Or is this something you know? This is a fire that's going to burn into something bigger than tackle it in that kind of public environment and deal with it so that people know that you're addressing it straight away.

Mark Bundle:

There is, of course, the exception of the small but very vulnerable crisis over biscuits in the office, which is a very small example of a crisis, but everyone should be voted about that and making sure they get topped up On that. Thank you very much, everyone, for your input. We'll wrap that section up there Again. Debbie Keir and Rich, thank you very much for talking about crisis today and, fingers crossed, this doesn't cause one itself.

Tom Inniss:

So that's all we've had time for today. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you found some useful snippets in our session and are able to go and put them into your own marketing strategy. We love that you've made it this far through your listen and we love making this content for you, so if you could recommend the show to one friend that you think would enjoy it, we'd be exceptionally grateful. Alternatively, if you've hated this podcast, then send it to someone you don't like. Thank you to all of the Brew Digital team for their research and input in today's session. Make sure to check out our past episodes and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on, and we will see you on the next one. I have not been Hayden, but these have been the marketers of the universe.