There’s always a temptation to ‘DIY’ efforts to improve a page’s rank on Google. A clever webmaster or site owner might think they can research their way into a top search engine spot without any outside help.
But they quickly get a reality check when they start to read the details of the 2024 Navboost API leak. Not only are the implications pretty daunting, but it becomes clear that the best way to rank up on Google is by employing the right kind of third-party help.
So how exactly does Google Navboost encourage webmasters and site owners to outsource search engine optimization (SEO)? Let’s take a deep dive into the API leak and find the answer.
The Google Navboost API Leak Exposed Biases
Industry professionals long expected that bigger companies received an ‘unnatural’ level of trust from Google’s PageRank system. Since Google representatives have confirmed the Navboost API leak as valid, we can now see first-hand how ‘big company’ biases play out.
While the general searching populace wants relevance and accuracy to be king, even if the source is from a smaller website, the Navboost API makes that a difficult scenario. In fact, Rand Fishkin’s summary of the Navboost API leak states that ‘brand matters more than anything else’ as far as page rank is concerned. Even if the web page itself contains low-quality information, if it’s backed by a known brand, it gets a massive boost.
This brand-over-quality bias is shown in a couple of places within the leak:
Click Through Rate: Bigger brands get more clicks, and rather than rely on content quality and the feedback gained through smaller user experience pools, Google rewards volume. We go over the entire Navboost bias towards clickthrough rate in the linked article. But suffice it to say that Navboost loves big numbers… numbers that only large brands can produce without outside help.
Brand Analysis: There are several instances where the API annotation outright tells us that it’s going to treat the search of some brands differently than others! For example, this bias is shown in the API referring to Narrative News Provider results:
narrativeNewsProvider – The custom type used by NarrativeNews. This is populated by the narrative news provider annotator, and it differs semantically from a mid for a news brand in that it doesn’t refer to the field of widely known news brands but rather but to the specific audio news RSS feeds that the narrative news feature serves. (There is of course substantial overlap between those two concepts)
Ignoring for a moment the implications this has for RSS feeds, why is Google making an analysis of ‘widely known news brands’ and giving them special classification or treatment? Should they not be looking strictly at user experience and page content when it comes to news? If they want to add a trust mechanism that’s fine of course, but that can’t be done by manually picking ‘widely known news brands’! That’s not a determination that should be made by either their employees or their algorithm.
We’ve also found what can best be described as a ‘multiplicative effect’ attribute. Big brands will tend to rank in more ‘fuzzy’ related key phrases, simply by volume of content and not quality. This attribute set seems to reward that. Of particular note is the description of these attributes:
LINT.IfChange Some document segments may consist of multiple sub-segments (e.g. a document might have multiple anchors or navboost queries). SubSegmentIndex contains all information needed to identify the sub-segment (e.g. specific query, query feature or anchor) where the mention is located.
Why would this need to be identified? Of course, pages are going to qualify for multiple different key phrases and show up on multiple SERPs! The only purpose for this that we can imagine is to increase the reach of ‘fuzzy’ search term matching on domains that are already popular.
But how does this discovery encourage site owners to outsource search engine optimization?
Navboost Wants Operators To Outsource Search Engine Optimization For Brand And Volume
There’s no possible way that a one-person show can compete with the big brands if massive search volumes are being given an advantage. Generating organic search traffic becomes impossible when the prerequisite isn’t site attributes and content quality, but sheer numerical superiority and name recognition.
With that in mind, there’s two main categories that need to be addressed, if we’re taking the Navboost API leak to heart: Brand and search volume.
Outsourcing website branding might seem like a strange concept to some. The brand is what a company builds over time, with a combination of loyal customers and the imagery they use to present a company to the world, right?
But it’s more than that, these days. Website branding also includes endorsements, links, paid advertising, and free advertising. In essence, the other entities that approve of a brand form the archetype of the average customer who will use the brand. The demographic bands that a brand advertises within impact the kinds of free news exposure and word of mouth that they later receive.
It might seem oddly meta to say ‘the brand is the customer is the brand’, but in a lot of ways that’s true, as far as search is concerned. Certain demographics will use specific search terms, and of course, there’s geofencing to consider. So while it’s important to have the right logo and letterhead, it’s far more important that the right demographics are searching for a site’s content. As we know, multiple Navboost queries potentially increase the scope of fuzzy searches that tangentially relate to a site. Get an entire, highly focused crowd to search for specific content, and a company has a powerful SEO weapon.
The three main outsourcing methods for branding are freelancers, design platforms, and agencies. Design platforms are great if a company wants to be ‘hands on’ and take part in things like commercial production. Freelancers are best utilized when specific brand goals have been identified and can be articulated clearly. Design agencies, while expensive, are also the most ‘hands-off’ because they take care of everything across multiple media options.
The second reason to outsource search engine optimization is to create search volume. This kind of volume is the main built-in advantage of the big brands, and it generally requires commercial resources in order to balance the scales.
Most of the ways to do this are on the more expensive side: Hiring influencers, bounty programs, and (once again) paid advertising are all ways to promote a website for traffic and clicks. But the most cost-efficient way is click-through rate (CTR) manipulation. We’ll go into more detail about CTR manipulation in its own section below, but for the moment just understand that it’s a programmatic way to generate traffic to a website that looks natural, and mimics the habits of a user who is genuinely interested in the topic on offer.
With all this having been said, new companies are almost certainly better off establishing brand guidelines and some paid advertising before investing in SEO. Companies with little to no search credibility or brand have a slim chance of being able to game the system in any significant way. Establishing a solid brand will allow the company to spend seed money on some low-cost paid advertising, nourish the loyalty of a few customers, and essentially prove to the world that they’re legitimate. That will help with the first two Es in the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) metric, and lay a solid foundation for professional SEO help later on.
Is CTR Manipulation A Critical Component To Outsourcing Search Engine Optimization?
The short answer is yes. Here’s the longer answer.
When a site owner decides to outsource search engine optimization, they often only look at two things: Key phrases and backlinks. While these are critical components of a successful website, the Navboost API leak has taught us that these measures barely scratch the surface.
Backlinks and the right key phrases are important, but the bias towards larger, more active websites is so strong that it’s nearly impossible to rank with a site using natural search alone. Experiments have been performed that only utilize top key phrases, follow all of the site optimization rules, and make use of all the best backlink tricks. But the vast majority of those sites need another catalyst.
Traffic, as it turns out, is one of the most effective catalysts for websites that are looking to rank more highly on Google. So once the rest of the site is established, one of the critical last steps in outsourcing search engine optimization is to start using a CTR manipulation program.
According to modern SEO strategy, the first hundred backlinks on a site are (usually) pretty artificial. It should be no surprise that the first few thousand visits to a site would also be artificially generated in order to achieve anything significant.
So we turn to professional CTR manipulation as a way to counter Google’s natural bias towards large corporate websites (often containing low-quality information). It’s cheaper than hiring influencers to push the site or click farmers (who usually won’t perform natural, positive browsing and lingering patterns anyway) to visit the target page en-masse.
Influencers, if a company can afford them in the first place, often create an unrealistic traffic pattern. Their followers will hit a site for a day or two, and then that traffic completely disappears. By contrast, proper CTR manipulation creates a more natural rise and a more realistic growth profile that Google will reward.
A good reason to avoid click farms is that the traffic is obviously artificial, and frequent use of those services is likely to land a site in SERP hell, where they’re so penalized that they’re unlikely to ever crawl out of the bottom of Google’s search results.
With those options off the table, we turn to a slower, safer, method: Professional CTR manipulation.
Getting Help With CTR Manipulation When Outsourcing Search Engine Optimization
There’s not a great way to ‘DIY’ CTR manipulation, because it requires a lot of infrastructure and automation intelligence. At a minimum, it requires a Cloud server farm spanning multiple regions, well-tuned automation, browser configurations that evade modern fingerprinting, and enough well-scripted UI routines to make each visit look natural. In other words, DIYing CTR manipulation is far more expensive and time-consuming than just hiring a professional.
The first thing to look for in a professional CTR manipulation firm is a free plan. Trying the service before committing to a long-term plan is an industry norm, and anything else is a tough sell.
The second feature to look for is Chromium browsers that are configured to allow Google tracking. Our article on Navboost browser bias covers all of the reasons why this is important. But if it isn’t a standard feature (or option) for a CTR manipulation service that targets Google, that’s a big red flag.
The use of actual browsers over forging the user agent is a preferred feature. There are a lot of Chrome-specific features that can’t simply be emulated, and using real browsers ensures proper tracking.
It’s important that the company has an AdSense-safe feature. The last thing that a site owner wants is to deal with ad fraud claims. The use of ad blockers in the manipulation process is critical.
Finally, dwell time is one of the most important features of a proper CTR manipulation company. What separates the real deal from a glorified click farm is the ability for certain sessions to click, scroll, and linger on the target site. The Navboost API leak shows us that these metrics are tracked, so at some level, it matters.
While CTR manipulation is one of the last steps in outsourcing search engine optimization, it’s also one of the most important. Top of the Results has all of the features that we just mentioned, and is probably superior to any affordable home-grown solution. Contact us for information on our monthly plans and customization options.