What is the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines?
The Google Search quality rater guidelines are a detailed set of instructions that Google’s human evaluators (called raters or quality raters) use to assess the quality and relevance of the webpages Google returns on its search results pages.
The Google Search quality rater guidelines help quality raters understand how to evaluate various aspects of webpages and ensure that they meet Google’s requirements.
Specifically, the raters perform web searches and review the webpages Google returns on its search results pages. They then assign these pages a score that goes from lowest to highest.
“Lowest” indicates the webpage is spammy, undesirable, and unhelpful to visitors, while “highest” indicates the webpage is helpful and high-quality. The individual ratings are:
- Lowest
- Lowest+
- Low
- Low+
- Medium
- Medium+
- High
- High+
- Highest
The ratings with the plus + are considered halfway between the previous and next ratings. So, lowest+ is midway between lowest and low. Similarly, medium+ is midway between medium and high.
The ratings these raters provide do not directly affect search rankings. Instead, they serve as essential feedback that helps Google improve and refine its search algorithms to return more accurate and reliable results to visitors.
Google publishes the search quality rater guidelines as a PDF file. The file is not a one-and-done document, as Google frequently updates it to align with current realities. You can find the current version in the PDF file available here.
Who is a Quality Rater?
A quality rater is an individual employed by third-party companies to evaluate the quality and relevance of search results generated by the Google Search algorithm.
Quality raters use the quality rater guidelines to decide whether Google’s current or proposed algorithm update meets Google’s goal of presenting relevant and reliable results to searchers.
They perform sample searches just like regular Google users and determine the quality and helpfulness of the results page based on the requirements specified in the search quality rater guidelines. Quality raters then assign the page a page quality and needs met rating.
- Page Quality – The page quality rating specifies the value and usefulness of the page
- Needs Met – The needs met rating specifies whether the webpage meets the needs of the searcher
Google currently has about 16,000 search raters, typically from the region where it wants to implement the change.
However, despite their role in improving the Google Search algorithm, Google has clarified that its quality raters do not directly impact the Google Search results pages. They cannot make a site rank higher or lower than it already does.
How Google Raters Improve the Google Search Algorithm
Google frequently conducts experiments on future updates to the Google Search algorithm. Once done, the proposed changes are passed on to raters for evaluation.
For example, quality raters may be shown two search results pages. One has the changes already implemented, while the other does not. The rater would then select which of the results they prefer and inform Google why.
It should be noted that Google Search quality raters are just one method by which Google evaluates planned updates to Google Search. Google also relies on user research and live experiments.
Google then decides whether to include the changes to Google Search based on the results from its raters, user research, and live experiments.
Besides evaluating search results pages, Google also uses its raters to categorize information to improve its systems. For example, raters could help Google identify the language of content, understand the important information in a piece of content, or determine the correct spelling of certain words.
SEO Takeaways From the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines
While initially intended for quality raters, the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines remain a helpful resource for bloggers and SEOs who want to improve their rankings on Google results pages. Specifically, it lets them know what Google looks out for on their pages, which, in turn, guides their SEO, content creation, and link building efforts.
1 E-E-A-T is Important to Rank on Google
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It refers to the signals that Google uses to determine the quality of a webpage.
The Google search quality rater guidelines provide detailed information on the importance of the E-E-A-T signals required from sites looking to rank on Google. Simply put, the higher your E-E-A-T signal, the likelier you are to rank on search results pages.
To determine your E-E-A-T signal, Google requires its quality raters to review:
- What you say about yourself and your site on your About page
- What third-party sites say about your site, author, and content
- How well the main content of the webpage indicates your trustworthiness
- What visitors and customers say on reviews and comments they left on your site
Google also allows its raters to use other signals to determine a site’s E-E-A-T signal. For example, the quality rater could look for customer service information on sites that host an online store.
Trustworthiness is the most important aspect of E-E-A-T, and any site that displays any sign of untrustworthiness is issued a low E-E-A-T score, even if it displays a high level of experience, expertise, and authority.
2 YMYL Keywords Require High E-E-A-T Signals
YMYL refers to Your Money or Your Life. These are keywords that have a significant impact on the health, wellness, finances, and safety of a person or group of people. For example,
- What to do during an earthquake
- Liver cancer treatment
- How to invest in stock
The Google search quality rater guidelines specifically require quality raters to scrutinize Your Money or Your Life content more closely than other types of content.
This means bloggers require high E-E-A-T signals to rank for Your Money or Your Life keywords. In fact, it is almost impossible for random bloggers to rank for some keywords.
3 Do Not Create Low-Quality Content With AI
Google Search quality rater guidelines clarify that bloggers can create high and low-quality content using generative AI. However, while Google can rank high-quality AI content, it categorizes low-quality AI content as spam.
Google Search rater guidelines also discuss scaled content abuse, which refers to the use of AI to create spammy and low-quality content at a large scale. The content is either created from scratch or modified from existing content originally published by other sites.
Google Search rater guidelines further clarify that bloggers can still violate its scaled content abuse policy without generative AI, for example, when they use web scrapers or create content using a team of human writers.
If your site relies on a team of freelancers, then you should have editors who review their work before publishing. If you rely on AI content, make sure to have as much human input as possible. Crosscheck the facts, and make sure to edit the content for flow and readability.
You should also remove any reference to the content being created by AI, as it is a clear indicator that the content was not properly edited. For example, AI-generated content usually contains phrases like “As an AI language model” or makes references to its “cutoff date.”
4 Avoid Spammy Link Building Practices
Google Search Essential guidelines contain an exhaustive list of SEO practices that can earn you a manual action penalty. However, Google also instructs its quality raters to look for specific spammy content creation and link building techniques.
For example, Google tasks its quality raters to look out for low-quality pages, hacked pages, and pages engaged in black hat SEO techniques like expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse, and site reputation abuse.
- Scaled content abuse refers to large amounts of low-quality content created using generative AI or a team of human writers.
- Expired domain abuse is the practice of purchasing expired high-ranking domains and populating them with low-quality content.
- Site reputation abuse is the practice of publishing third-party content on a first-party site with the intent of exploiting the rankings of the first-party site.
Google Search rater guidelines clarify that websites and pages should exist for the benefit of the visitor. Sites that contain content created to benefit the site and publisher without caring about the visitor are typically considered spammy and should be rated lowest.