On October 19, 2021 Google has updated the company’s search quality raters guidelines, after over a year of the document not being updated.
The search quality raters’ guidelines are an important official document by Google detailing how raters (human evaluators) should assess and rate the quality of a search result. Their feedback helps Google improve its algorithms. The document – named Search Quality Evaluators’ Guidelines – can be downloaded from Google.
The raters’ guidelines are a key document for everybody working in digital marketing or specifically search as they provide useful insights into how Google looks at the quality of websites and pages and into what websites and web pages Google prefers to rank higher and why.
The new guidelines are 172 pages long and include, among the other changes, updates on the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages, on what constitutes lowest quality content and on the definition of upsetting-offensive.