Catalyst POINt OF VIEW

JaNUaRy 2016

WHY THIS MATTERS This is Google’s quality assurance program to gauge how programmatic changes align with human feedback, with the Search Quality Rating Guidelines serving as an instructional blueprint for the evaluation process.

Although an abridged version was published in 2013 and previous versions have been leaked, this is the first time Google has published the full text, and it contains insights into their present and future focus for organic search.

IMPLICATIONS Numerous sections have been added or revised, including a new rating method. There are now two primary scales raters are instructed to use in their review: Page Quality and the new “Needs Met” scale, a 5-point unipolar scale ranging from “Fully Meets” to “Fails to Meet.”

WHAT IS IT? In late November 2015, Google officially released their guidelines for search quality evaluators.

The 160-page document is a guide to instruct more than a thousand evaluators on how to accurately rate websites so Google can assess the effectiveness of their programmatic changes and experimentation within search results.

From Google: “We often make changes to the guidelines as our understanding of what users want evolves, but we haven’t shared an update publicly since [2013]. However, we recently completed a major revision of our rater guidelines to adapt to [the] mobile world, recognizing that people use search differently when they carry internet-connected devices with them all the time.”

Major priorities, additions, and changes also include:

New Sections Mobile: This is the most significant change and includes mobile screen captures in examples, instructions for raters to use mobile screens, and to assign the lowest rating for pages that are not mobile friendly.

Needs Met: This new section is one of the primary evaluation scales to determine how well a web page meets the needs of the searcher. Options range from “Fails to Meet” to “Fully Meets” needs.

Know and Know Simple Queries: If answering a simple question, structuring this clearly can help Google populate an “answer box” (block quote-style box of information appearing in-line with search results).

GOOGLE SEARCH QUALITY RATING GUIDELINES

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Revised Sections Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (E-A-T): This refers to what many think of as a web page’s overall value (to the reader). The rater is required to assess the web page based on these areas.

Your Money or Your Life (YMYL): Does the query fall into a number of areas (financial, shopping, medical, legal, etc.) Google has identified as highly sensitive? These pages require greater scrutiny by the raters.

Low Quality Content: Low marks are required for content that is poorly written, not mobile friendly, duplicate, not helpful, contains spam, is misleading, ‘scammy’ in any way, or outdated.

BEST PRACTICES The over-arching theme of the guidelines is to ensure search results provide the highest quality, most relevant content with a focus on pages that meet the needs of the searcher and provide the best user experience for the applicable device.

Following are a few of the specific areas mentioned in the guidelines, which are offered here to boost optimization efforts and refine priorities, if needed:

• Improving a website’s E-A-T: Effectively showcasing a site’s Expertise, Authority, and Trust will help establish the site as reputable and relevant. It will also increase the likelihood a visitor would share or reference the site. E-A-T can be increased

through expanded bios, linking to the credentials of contributors, stating formal education, providing detailed reviews, and other supplementary content.

• Focus on meeting the searcher’s needs: Providing content relevant to the searcher’s query is critical to meeting the searcher’s needs. Pages with redundant, low quality, outdated content should be re-written to be more relevant, and supplementary content will not only improve E-A-T but will help determine whether the searcher’s needs are met as well.

• Gain extra visibility through featured snippets: If the page is answering a simple question, be sure to put that answer in a concise, 1-2 sentence opening paragraph. Referred to as “Know Simple Queries,” formatting the page this way improves the chance Google will display the content directly in search results.

• If the site is a YMYL site: For sites and topics identified by Google as greatly impacting a person’s well-being (“Your Money or Your Life”), Google may hold the site to a much higher standard. Greater care should be exercised to be sure guidelines are adhered to and best practices implemented.

• Avoid the very appearance of evil: Confirm the site does not contain any low quality tactics such as spammy main pages or unmoderated user-generated content (blog comments, discussion boards, etc.), keyword stuffing, copied or abandoned

content, heavy ad usage, or any sort of scam-related content such as sneaky redirects or fake registration forms. Instead, be sure to focus on high quality main content on each page, fairly represent the site’s E-A-T, and add value through real supplementary content.

• Mobile, mobile, mobile: Not only does Google require search quality raters to automatically give a site lowest possible marks for sites that are not mobile-friendly, but as an indication of its significance, all example screen-captures are of mobile screens. It is essential to audit the site with a mobile device or mobile browser view.

OUR POINT OF VIEW Reviewing the Search Quality Rating Guidelines can provide insights into Google’s priorities for ranking search results, but Google has confirmed the guidelines do not directly dictate rankings and additional key areas are not directly or deeply covered by the guidelines including semantic mark-up, a site’s backlink profile, domain authority, technical site structure, and much more.

However, Catalyst actively monitors these guidelines and other best practices to ensure recommendations are in alignment. As Google continues to enhance their ability to focus on surfacing the highest quality content in search results, websites that prioritize development based on adhering to these best practices have the greatest opportunity for visibility in organic search results, both now and in the future.