Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines

The Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines are a set of guidelines published by Google and intended for quality raters to guide their assignment of assessing the quality of search results.

These guidelines provide detailed instructions on how to evaluate the quality of web pages and the relevance of search results. Their purpose is to help ensure that Google’s search results are useful and reliable for users.

The Google Quality Raters Guidelines are a public document, available to anyone who wants to better understand what Google considers important for website quality-the address for reference is https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/it//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf. They were first published in 2013 and are updated regularly to reflect changes in search algorithms and user expectations-the latest version was amended on November 22, 2023.

A number of key concepts are emphasized within the Google Quality Raters Guidelines:

• EEAT. An acronym for Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness and Experience, it is a concept that refers to the need for content to be created by authors who are experienced and authoritative in their field and for the information provided to be accurate and reliable. User experience with the content is also a crucial factor, as it must be positive and satisfying.
• YMYL. An acronym for Your Money or Your Life, this is a concept that refers to pages or content that can significantly affect the happiness, health, financial stability or safety of users or society. Google holds YMYL pages to a higher standard because inaccurate or misleading information can have serious consequences on people’s lives; therefore, a higher level of EEAT is required for YMYL content.
• Page Evaluation. Evaluators are charged with assigning a rating to the quality of the pages they review. This includes rating the main content (MC), the reputation of the site and content creator, the presence of misleading or harmful content, advertising and monetization, and other aspects that affect the user experience.
• Evaluation of Searches. Evaluators must also assess how well search results meet users’ intentions, ranking results according to how well they respond to the search query.

These guidelines are critical to understanding what Google considers important for a high-quality website and how changes to sites can affect ranking in search results. Although quality raters’ evaluations do not directly affect the ranking of websites, they are used to improve and test Google’s algorithms and thus have a strong relevance to SEO.