Google has publicly disclosed its search engine’s guidelines. Here’s what you need to know.

If you work in the tech scene, and have not been living under a rock for the past week, you cannot have escaped the news last week that Google took the unprecedented step of publicly disclosing its Google Quality Rater's Guidelines & Handbook.

At 160 pages, you wouldn't be far wrong in thinking that it could put a can of RedBull to sleep, but this still didn't stop some in the internet marketing world from losing their collective minds and bandying it about as though it were the Holy Grail, wrapped in the Turin Shroud, and the end of the line for SEO (search engine optimization) consultants everywhere.

For once, we got a confirmed look at the "wheels-within-wheels" that power the global internet behemoth that is Google. "At last!" marketers cried, we were handed a peek behind the curtain to see how the magic is made.

Having spent the last decade trying to understand and reverse engineer the Google search algorithm, I have long said, "Build websites for people, not for search engines", and the search quality guidelines very much reinforces this idea throughout.

What is the Google Quality Rater's Guidelines & Handbook

The reason Google works so well is that the search engine delivers what users are looking for in a consistent and reliable fashion. A large part of this is because of the technology and software layers that Google have developed to understand the internet and sort the trillions of pages it finds to match the hundreds of billions of queries it handles each month.

At such a scale, reviewing content is only possible by matching the content against templates and formulas to assess the page quality algorithmically.

Whilst the future undoubtedly relies on more use of machine learning, as Google hinted at earlier this year, for now Google cannot hand blind trust of its algorithm to software and formulas, and their inherent failings.

A dark subsection of SEO, known as "Black Hat SEO" or "Spamdexing", exists on the fringes of the industry and seeks to find flaws in this algorithm and exploit it to rank their content prominently to get a lot of traffic.

Examples of this include: spamming links to forums to trick the algorithm into thinking your site is very popular, or putting keywords on your site in white text on a white page, etc.

Why is it important?

We need to remember that the internet is not static. It is an ever growing, ever evolving network. The way we consume internet content also continues to evolve and broaden across desktop, mobile, tablets, wearables, etc.

Google is faced with the task of evaluating a rapidly moving target, whilst thousands of people continue to poke holes in its algorithm and exploit any loopholes.

To do this, Google employ "Search Quality Raters" to help them understand what is and isn't a relevant result to a range of search terms. Then, they try to build algorithm filters that can filter pages based on this feedback. Essentially asking users, "Tell us what is good, and what isn't, and we will make sure our algorithm returns more of the good and less of the bad."

So if we can understand what these quality raters consider good, and then make sure our website delivers that, we have the best chance of appearing high in the Google results and getting a lot of traffic. Google is incredibly secretive about its actual ranking algorithm (sorry, France) – so understanding how the search quality raters guide this algorithm is as close as we can ever get to understanding it.

Google has previously been equally secretive about its quality rater's guidelines, but all of them were eventually leaked and it seems that Google is now trying to get ahead of this and own the message themselves.

So, what do we need to know?

Though the report is a hefty 160 pages, a large amount of that is taken up with examples that drive home some core concepts. To save you the time of reading through the whole thing, let's cover the 3 key takeaways that you should be doing if you want to rank well in Google.

Quality raters are asked to give each page a Page Quality (PQ) score, based on how well the users needs are met (NM) by the page and the Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (E-A-T) of the page or author.

1. It's all about understanding and fulfilling user intent

As simple as it sounds, this is really at the heart of what Google is trying to do.

We have seen Google shift from the classic 10 blue links to its modern version of the answers engine. When typing in "Groupon Stock Price", Google understands what you are looking for and returns that data directly within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

This is Google explicitly understanding the users' intent and fulfilling that request for data.

The same is true when typing a question directly into Google, for example: "How far is it between Singapore and Skegby" – the SERP shows 10,877 kilometers and a map with a direct line between the two locations; the rest of the SERP fails to give any answer to the question due to its obscurity.

So, what does this mean for webmasters?

Article 2.2 (page 8) of the document is a great place to start – "What is the Purpose of a Webpage?"

Ensure that, as the website's owner, you have a clear understanding of the purpose of each of your pages and what objectives they exist to fulfill. The purpose of a page could be anything, such as giving information and purchasing options for a product, giving news on a particular subject, or simply showing some humorous images.

The document outlines a few examples of its own:

Type of Page Purpose of the Page News website homepage To display news Shopping page To sell or give information about the product Video page To allow users to watch a video Currency converter page To calculate equivalent amountsin different currencies

To further hammer home this point, Article 7.2 (page 41) of the document specifically states that if a user is unable to figure out the purpose of a page, despite their best efforts to do so, then such pages should receive the lowest possible rating score.

That is the same rating as pages that are intentionally deceptive or malicious, as the document elaborates in Article 7.3 (page 42).

Key point: understand the purpose of each page – make sure that each page fulfills this purpose and meets the needs of those visiting it!

2. Produce great, engaging, and unique content!

Google has spoken – Content is King!

As part of the guidelines, Google tells quality raters to differentiate between main content (MC) and supporting content (SC), with MC being the core content of the site, typically the bulk text – such as this article, and SC being the additional content such as the navigation links, footer text, etc.

Article 5.1 (page 27) of the document highlights the traits that would justify rating a page as "Highest Quality" – specifically that the content should fulfill the user intent when visiting the page. This means providing a substantive amount of content that is properly researched and well written.

To be more precise, the document states that content which is "created with a high degree of time and effort, and in particular, expertise, talent, and skill" is required to be considered very high quality.

Conversely, Article 7.4 (page 43) outlines what would be flagged as the lowest quality content. Unsurprisingly, this covers pretty much everything that is counter to the above – specifically, content that is not helpful, overly stuffed with keywords, gibberish or meaningless, auto-generated, or simply copied from elsewhere.

Clearly, there are no shortcuts to producing quality content:

Writing small pieces of text simply won't cut it

"Spinning" or automatically generating content won't get you anywhere

Most importantly – simply copy pasting content from elsewhere on the internet is never going to rank highly

Finally, Article 6.5.4 (page 37) covers the importance of keeping your content relevant, updated, and maintained. It stands to reason that out-dated and no longer relevant content is likely to provide a bad user experience.

Key point: produce fantastic, well researched, and unique content. Keep it maintained and updated – no shortcuts or copying from elsewhere.

3. Establish yourself as an authoritative, trustworthy, expert in your field

The final piece in the search quality assessment: is the content trustworthy, or the author an expert?

Search quality raters are asked to evaluate the Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) of a particular website, author, and page.

This is a lot more important on the topics that Google considers Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) – topics such as finance, medicine, childcare, etc. This is because these subjects can have a significant impact upon a user's health, well-being, and finances.

Article 2.7 (page 16) covers this issue in specific detail, including how a quality rater should search for external references from reputable sources.

A small number of negative reviews are not considered to be an indication of negative E-A-T, especially when there are a large volume of positive citations. However, negative reviews or citations from trusted sources, such as the Better Business Bureau, are a strong indication of low E-A-T and will have a strong negative impact on the ability of a page to rank well, especially for YMYL topics.

Aside from openly looking to get strong citations, it would be wise to monitor all external reviews and correct or address any malicious reviews that would harm the trustworthiness of your content.

Key point: become a trusted authority in your vertical – get strong external reviews or citations, and outline your expertise and credentials.

A short summary

And finally, here is a short summary of the whole Page Quality guidelines, which can be found hiding in Article 9.2 (page 58).

Quality and quantity of main content

Level of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) of the page and of the website

Reputation of the website.

So, there we have it.

Continue to focus on delivering a great experience for users – build websites for people, not for search engines – and prominence in Google should follow!

Source: Google has publicly disclosed its search engine's guidelines. Here's what you need to know.