YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)

YMYL is an acronym that stands for “Your Money or Your Life“-it is an expression used by Google to describe pages or websites that could have a significant impact on the happiness, safety, health, or financial stability of an individual or society as a whole.

The definition of YMYL can be found in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines document, which lists the strict guidelines that pages that publish topics deemed to be precisely sensitive must adhere to in order to stand out in Search and be considered helpful and not harmful.

Examples of YMYL content include medical or legal information, financial advice, e-commerce, and anything else that could affect an individual’s health, safety, or economic well-being (even important decisions such as buying a home or choosing an educational institution) or that could cause harm (including indirect safety) to society as a whole: inaccurate or misleading information on these topics can have serious consequences, which is why Google has raised the bar.

Specifically, quality raters are called upon to identify the types of content that require a high level of reliability and authority.

For website owners, the concept of YMYL emphasizes the importance of providing accurate, verifiable, high-quality content, as these sites are held to higher standards by search engines. The goal is to ensure that users receive reliable information when it comes to decisions that can have a significant impact on their lives.

Therefore, and more than required of less “sensitive” content, YMYL sites must demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) to achieve and maintain good visibility in Google search results. This means that YMYL content should be not only informative and useful, but also created by experts in the field, supported by authentic experience, and presented in an authoritative and trustworthy manner.