google rating guidelines

Rating Guidelines

Prepared by- Kiran Nair

URL Rating

How to rate an URL?

Research the query Click on the URL to visit the landing page Assign a rating based on the guidelines

Understanding The Query

Understanding User Intent In-order to rate/evaluate the landing pages one

needs to understand the user intent

E.g.: When a user in U.S searches for tetris the most likely user intent is to play the game Tetris

Task Language & Task Location All queries have a task language and task location.

Users in different parts of the world may have different expectations for the same query.

E.g.: Query: footballIn US

but in UK it means soccer.

Classification Of User Intent

Action intent (Do)

Information intent (Know)

Navigation intent (Go)

Action Intent (Do)

The intent of an action query is to accomplish a goal like :

E.g.: The intent of a user entering the query download adobe reader is to download the software

Information Intent (Know)

The goal of an information query is to find information.

E.g.: Query: how to tie a tie?

Navigation Intent (Go)

The intent of a navigation query is to locate a specific webpage. Users have a single webpage or website in mind. This single webpage is called the target of the query.

E.g.: Query : iphone wikipedia Target Webpage: http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

The Rating Scale

The rating scale offers five rating options that are based on user intent and the utility of the landing page:

Vital

The Vital rating is used for situations like:1. The most likely intent of the query is navigation,

and the landing page is the target of the navigation query.

2. The most likely query intent is an entity and the landing page is the official webpage of the entity.

E.g.: Query: cristiano ronaldo User Intent: Go to the official Homepagehttp://www.cristianoronaldo.com – Vital Rating

Types of Vital Ratings

Appropriate Vital: The version of the official page seems right for the task location

E.g.: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/ for UK International Vital: The page is a “choose

your language” or “choose your location” page.E.g.: http://www.ikea.com/

Other Vital: The language or location of the official page does not match the task location, and a better version exists.

E.g.: http://www.ikea.com/dk/da/ for Germany

Useful

A rating of Useful is assigned to pages that are very helpful for most users. Useful pages should be high quality and a good “fit” for the query.

E.g.: Query: broadway tickets. User Intent: Buy broadway ticketshttp://www.ticketmaster.com/broadway

Relevant

A rating of Relevant is assigned to pages that are helpful for many or some users. Relevant pages fits the query, but they might be less comprehensive, less up-to-date, come from a less authoritative source, or cover only one important aspect of the query.

E.g.: Query: Abraham lincoln birthdayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Presidents_by_date_of_birth can be rated as relevant since Lincoln’s birthday is not prominently displayed

Slightly Relevant

A rating of Slightly Relevant is assigned to pages that are not very helpful for most users, but are somewhat related to the query. Slightly Relevant pages may be low quality and/or contain less helpful information.

E.g.: Query : Pregnancy symptoms

BUT….

Is it

Off-Topic or Useless

Assigned to pages that are not helpful for majority of the users. Off-Topic or Useless pages are unrelated to the query and have no utility.

E.g.:

Query:

Result:

URL Queries

Some queries look like URLs. These queries are called URL Queries.

E.g.:

Result: http://www.sitemaps.org/

New & Old pages

Some of the information queries may be about recent or past events. For some queries, timeliness is very important.

E.g.: Query: us open golf results Intent : to get information on the most recent results for the tournament. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_U.S._Open_%28golf%29 can be rated as useful since it displays the most recent results.

Flags

Different Types of Flags: Spam Flag Pornography Flag Malicious Flag

Spam Flag

Pages are assigned a spam flag if they have spam signals as specified in Webspam Guidelines

The different types of spam flags that can be assigned are:N

ot Spam

Maybe

Spam

Spam

Pornography Flag

Pornography Flag is to be assigned to all the pages that contain pornographic content like porn images, links, pop-ups, videos or ads

Malicious Flag

A page should be assigned a Malicious flag if: You are forced to quit your Firefox browser due

to prompts that keep coming back and will not go away

There are attempts to download spyware, Trojans, viruses, etc.

URL Rating Task With User Location

Role of User Locations for Query Interpretation

For certain queries it is important that we know the user location in-order to understand the query intent of the user.

E.g.: Query: User location:

Query: Pictures of kitten

User location:

PAGE QUALITY RATING GUIDELINES

For page quality rating the user has to click on the URL and then evaluate the landing page. When a page loads one needs to look at 2 parameters: Does the landing page load? Is the page in the task language or English

Identifying The Content

The content on a webpage can be classified into 3 sections: Main Content (MC) Supplementary Content (SC) Advertisements (Ads)

Main Content

Side Navigation

Supplementary Content

(Satisfying the purpose of the Page)

(Navigation to similar pages of the same website)

Ads

Not related to the website

Rating The Content

Rating the content is an important step of page quality rating

If the main content is helpful and it achieves its purpose then it can be rated as high or highest

Uniqueness of the content is also important

Identifying Website Rating For page quality rating it is also important to

analyze the entire website. Some website checks that needs to be performed are: Finding Home Page of the website – The home

page should be easily accessed via the landing page through links or by the website logo

Purpose of the landing page should be consistent with the entire website

It should be clear who is responsible for the content present on the website. The contact us / about us section gives information about who owns the site

Analyzing The Reputation of a Website

Reputation research in Page Quality rating is very important

Websites reputation is based on the experience of users and opinion of experts in the topic on the website

Online stores have user ratings which help other users to understand the stores reputation

How To Search For Reputation Information

Identify the "homepage" of the website

Try one or more of the following searches on Google: homepage reviews (ebay reviews) homepage complaints (ebay complaints) homepage -site:homepage.com (ebay –

site:ebay.com) link:homepage.com (link:ebay.com/)

URL & Page Quality Rating URL rating is dependent on the quality of landing

page as well as the query in the task whereas Page quality rating is query independent.

High quality pages should not always have a high URL rating as the page might not be helpful to the user

Rating Example[Elton John], English (US)

Likely User Intent • Do – Purchase music performed by Elton John• Know – Users want information or news about

Elton John• Go – Users want to go to the homepage of Elton

John’s official website

Vital The homepage of Elton John’s official and well maintained website

Useful – helpful for most users • Quality pages with biographical or good general

information, such as this Wikipedia page about Elton John

• Amazon page with Elton John MP3 downloads and CDs for sale:

Relevant – helpful for many or some users • A timely article about Elton John • Lyrics website page with links to lyrics of many

Elton John songs

Slightly Relevant – helpful for few users An outdated article about Elton John

Off-Topic or Useless – helpful for very few or no users

Very low quality page with keyword stuffing including multiple displays of “elton john” and “elton john tickets

WEBSPAM GUIDELINES

What is Webspam?

Webspam is a term for webpages introduced by webmasters that are used to trick search engines and draw users to their website.

Webspam is commonly referred as Spam and webmasters who use these spamming techniques are known as Spammers

Spam flags do not depend on a relationship between the query and the landing page.

How To Detect Spam?

When evaluating a page for spam one should look for the following:

Hidden text and hidden links Keyword stuffing Sneaky redirects Cloaking with JavaScript redirects and 100%

frame

APPLICATIONS

Keyword Analysis & Mapping

We know that Google defines 3 types of user intent for queries Do Know Go

Identifying The purpose of the website

There are different types of websites catering to different purposes E-commerce site or brand selling

products Service provider Informational site

User Intent Classifications

For e-commerce sites: Do : Know : Go = (high : low : high)

For Service Provider Do : Know : Go = (medium : high : low)

Information site Do : Know : Go = (low : high : medium)

Suggested Keyword Classification

Type of Website

Do Query Go Query Know Query

E-commerce Website 60% 25% 15%

Information Site 15% 25% 60%

Service Provider 30% 50% 20%

Keyword Mapping

Step 1: Divide the keyword basket into keyword clusters

Step 2 : For a keyword cluster map the keywords to different URLs based on their intent.

Keyword Cluster A Mapped URL

Keyword 1Primary Page

Keyword 2

Keyword 3 Support page 1

Keyword 4 Support page 2

Content Creation

While creating content we should understand the query intent of keywords that have been mapped on a page.

So while specifying the content themes we need to keep in mind the actual query intent.

http://www.abc.com/

Paragraph 1 Use Keywords Keyword Instance

Provide content themes according to the query intent Keyword 1, Keyword 2 1-2

Paragraph 2

1-2

Provide content themes according to the query intent Keyword 3, Keyword4, Keyword5

Paragraph 3

1-2

Provide content themes according to the query intent Keyword 4, Keyword1

Total no. of Recommended Words on Page 200-300

Link Strategy

For each keyword we need to have all the variations which can probably match the 3 search intent

Then we need to link those keywords to the appropriate webpage using a diversified link structure.

Thank You