Every SEO guide ventures to solve the mystery of Google’s algorithm. But what if Google had a document telling you how it wants its algorithm to behave? Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines is that document. Unfortunately, it’s 172 pages long. So in the interest of saving your sanity, I decided to read the entire thing and just tell you what you need to know. Here’s what you’ll learn in this guide: Google’s quality raters are a team of anywhere from 10-100k people that Google has hired. They determine how well Google’s search results solve a user’s needs.
Google uses their
Feedback to help understand the impact of algorithmic tweaks. The guidelines don’t directly affect the algorithm or rankings, but Google said in a CNBC interview executive data that the guidelines “fundamentally show what the algorithm should do.” What are Google’s quality guidelines? guidelines tell quality raters exactly how to evaluate a search result. These are all laid out in the 172-page document. The document has three main sections: Page Quality Rating Guidelines – This section explains the main factors that quality raters should look for in the search results. These include the purpose of the page, E-A-T signals, content quality, ownership of a website, and the website’s reputation.
Understanding Mobile User Needs
This section breaks down how Google views mobile interaction. Needs Met Rating Guidelines – This scale evaluates how well a search result solves SEO EBL mobile user needs. QRGs demystified: What do SEOs need to know? Not every section of the 172-page document is helpful for SEOs. And the sections that are helpful aren’t obvious. But dig deeper into what Google says about each topic, and you can extract valuable intel. So here are the main takeaways.
Google lets raters know that “many websites are eager to tell users how great they are.” So Google directs its quality raters to evaluate reputation not only on the site itself but also by looking off-page. The guidelines instruct raters to look for mentions of a site or author in external “news articles, Wikipedia articles, blog posts, magazine articles, forum discussions, and ratings from independent organizations,” so you should too.
