google rating guidelines
TRANSCRIPT
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