Search Quality Raters Guidelines Updated

Google recently updated the Search Quality Raters Guidelines for the first time in a year. Surprisingly, the document was actually shortened a bit – from 175 to 172 pages.

Here's a Summary of the October 2021 Changes;

• Expanded the definition of the YMYL subcategory 'Groups of people'
• Refreshed guidance on how to research reputation information for websites and content creators
• Restructured and updated 'Lowest Page Quality' section; reorganized and refreshed examples to reflect new structure
• Simplified the definition of 'Upsetting-Offensive' to remove redundancy with Lowest Page Quality section
• Minor changes throughout (updated screenshots and URLs, wording, and examples for consistency; removed outdated examples; fixed typos; etc.)

In conjunction with the changes, Google's Public Liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, posted an overview of Google's guidelines for Search in which he explained what the guidelines are for (to make sure search is providing relevant, high quality results), who uses them (the search quality raters), and how often they're updated (from time to time).

Danny goes on to point out that the ratings provided by the search quality raters...

...don't directly impact how a page or site appears in Search. Instead, they help us measure how well our systems are working to deliver great content.

Here's the updated YMYL section with the expanded groups of people criterion;

Some types of pages or topics could potentially impact a person's future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

We call such pages "Your Money or Your Life" pages, or YMYL. T...