Martin Splitt from Google said something I found very interesting in his video hangout from the other day. At the 25 minute mark, Martin said that his team technically now is "not supposed to know much about ranking." Historically the team did, but not after he joined in 2018.
He said John Mueller and Gary Illyes do know about rankings because historically they did have access to the ranking related details. But nowadays, he said, Martin and maybe the others, do not have as much access to these details.
John, Gary and Martin are part of the Google Search Central team, they are Search Advocates and I guess roles change over the years?
Martin said "It's quite interesting, historically speaking John and Gary do have insights into ranking because policy has been that they had access to these things in the past." He added "we are not supposed to know much about ranking and as I joined only in 2018 I actually never got access to any of the ranking related bits and pieces."
He did learn some ranking tidbits from John and Gary, he said "I did learn a bunch of stuff thanks to Gary and John." "But I really really don't want to answer any ranking related things specifically," he said. We know Martin does not like talking about rankings and he makes that clear.
But he said "I have done in the recent couple of weeks and months because of Core Web Vitals and it is very very tricky for me to navigate this, so i'd rather just not say anything on the ranking topic. I would recommend going to John and asking him about it directly on Twitter."
Interesting history here...
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at YouTube Community.
