A quick guide to understanding Google’s quality rater guidelines
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A quick guide to understanding Google's quality rater guidelines
"You can view the rater guidelines as where we want the search algorithm to go," Ben Gomes, head of search for Google, once explained to CNBC. Gomes' statement highlights the document's relationship with Google's algorithm, yet despite its relevance for publishers and SEOs, the quality rater guidelines (QRG) remain an intimidating resource for many digital marketers.
At SMX West in San Jose, Jennifer Slegg, editor for The SEM Post, discussed how Google views the QRG, what quality raters do, and explained four of the guidelines' most important themes for publishers.
Quality raters are not SEO professionals and do not know whether algorithm changes that get tested will actually go live. Their feedback helps Google evaluate changes, but doesn't directly impact rankings. The guidelines exist to help raters assess "Page Quality" and "Needs Met."
The pillars of Google's quality rater guidelines
During her presentation, Slegg divided the QRG into four main themes.
Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Raters assess pages according to the amount of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the page's main content as well as the content's creator.
Google uses a variety of signals as a proxy to match what humans are looking for, and in that regard, E-A-T is a ranking factor, Slegg said. However, Google does not assign pages an E-A-T score - it is simply a term Google created to teach quality raters what to look for.
Google emphasizes E-A-T to ensure trust in their search results.
"How does Google assess E-A-T? They said that the best-known signal is PageRank - that means links," Slegg explained. Google may count links from other autho