And two pieces of notable Google news.
Google accidentally erased a customer’s account and data backups, causing a two-week disruption for Australian pension fund UniSuper. A misconfiguration caused the incident during the provisioning of UniSuper’s private cloud services, which resulted in the account being marked for automatic deletion. Google has detailed the issue and implemented remediation steps to prevent it from happening again, emphasizing that it was an isolated incident with no systemic risks for other customers. UniSuper was able to recover its data using backups from a different provider.
Google has confirmed the authenticity of leaked internal documents that reveal details about the data it collects and its search ranking algorithm. The documents provide insight into the factors that influence search results but also highlight the complexity and potential outdatedness of the information. The documents mention features like “goodClicks,” “badClicks,” and “lastLongestClicks” tied to Navboost and Glue. They also suggest that Google uses Chrome browser clickstreams to power search results and employs allowlists in travel, COVID, and politics.
The key takeaways include the importance of building a strong brand, the potential devaluation of expertise and trustworthiness, the significance of user intent and navigation patterns, the diminishing importance of classic ranking factors, and the challenges small businesses face in SEO.
While not a common case, the UniSuper case highlights the critical need for robust backup and disaster recovery strategies. IT service providers should ensure clients have multiple, independent backup solutions and regularly test data recovery procedures. This approach minimizes the risk of data loss and service disruptions. Data in the cloud needs protection, too.
I also want to highlight changes in Google Search. If you’re not aware, some significant changes are happening in SEO and linked to AI. Small businesses may find it increasingly difficult to compete in SEO due to the complexity and evolving nature of Google’s algorithms, downplaying smaller sites. What would happen if Google traffic went to zero? That’s why we care.