Impact is an automatic estimate of how much a story is likely to
affect one website, weighing who published it, whether Google has
confirmed a ranking change, how many outlets ran it, and whether
the wording implies work on your site. It reads headlines, not
your analytics — treat it as triage, not a verdict.
For a quarter century, the Google search box has been one of the most recognizable interfaces in computing: a thin white rectangle, a blinking cursor, a few typed words, and a list of blue links. On…