Understanding Google's Quality Rater Guidelines

The key to making your website more visible to search engines is to know what they prioritize. Google ranks search results to place those considered most valuable to users at the top. While web crawlers act as a driving force for the ranking algorithms, Google also takes data from contracted "quality raters" to refine the algorithms' output.



Quality raters evaluate websites based on Google's Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), a comprehensive document defining the factors that make a website high-quality in Google's eyes. Understanding these guiding factors helps make your website stand out, and an experienced web design company Santa Rosa knows how to use them effectively.

Search Intent

Every search query carries with it a particular intent—what the user hopes to find or accomplish. The QRG document states that a page should satisfy this intent in order to be considered a quality search result. This is the most fundamental aspect, but it bears mentioning. If a user searches for "wood vs vinyl flooring", the results should discuss the pros and cons of these two types of flooring. If they instead search for "buy vinyl flooring", the results should be retailers selling vinyl flooring.

Quality raters assign a "Needs Met" score to results for a search query based on how well they satisfy search intent. Smart use of keywords that appear in queries helps ensure that your page shows up in relevant searches.

Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness

Another key factor that quality raters look for is what is referred to as E-A-T: the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of a given result. How this is determined, and how important it is for the ranking, varies between queries. Generally, the key is transparency. This includes:

• Providing author bios and credentials
• Providing an "about us" page or section that tells more about the site and the people behind it
• Providing contact details for the author(s)
• Having a customer service desk, for websites that sell products or services
• Backlinks from other sites, especially those that are also considered high in E-A-T

When this information is readily available on a website, that creates an impression of transparency, and thus confidence in the quality of content. Backlinks are also important for digital marketing, directing users from other channels towards your website.

YMYL Pages

The QRG define "Your money, your life" (YMYL) pages as those with content that can affect "the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users". Some pages are labeled YMYL because they provide information that a user would look for when making an important decision in their life—health or medical information, legal and financial advice, public pages from official or government agencies, news regarding major subjects such as politics or business, etc. Other YMYL pages give an interface for monetary transactions—making purchases, paying bills or transferring money.

YMYL pages receive significantly more scrutiny from quality raters because their content can have a distinct impact on users' lives. E-A-T is weighed heavily here; a lack of transparency or accountability for this kind of content means the result can't be trusted for these kinds of subjects. Needs Met scores are also more polarized—a medical site that doesn't give comprehensive, readily available information to users can't be said to meet needs at all, as incomplete or inaccurate information can't fulfill search intent.

Page Security

Pages with form fields that allow users to send information require extra scrutiny as well. For example, a page may ask users to register for access by providing personally identifying information. These pages must employ Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to encrypt data submitted through form fields. Otherwise, third parties could potentially intercept this data, causing a breach of security.

Page Quality

The main content is not the only aspect of a page taken into consideration by quality raters. The page's layout and supplementary content influence the perceived quality of the page, which in turn affects whether a user is satisfied with the search result. Clearly structured content, intuitive and accessible UI and an appealing or professional aesthetic enhance page quality. Conversely, content that is split across multiple pages, blocked or interrupted by ads or visually unclear and unappealing lower page quality.

First impressions matter for your website, so good web design goes a long way. Turning to an experienced and competent web design company Santa Rosa helps you make a higher quality page.

Mobile Optimization

Increasingly, people use mobile devices as a primary means of accessing the internet. For webmasters, this means that mobile-friendly pages matter greatly. Websites that lack mobile-friendly versions of their pages are less accessible and less visually appealing to the growing number of users visiting on their phones or tablets. As a result, Google's QRG instruct quality raters to assign low ratings to mobile-unfriendly pages.

What Web Design Means For You

Quality rater guidelines are also guidelines for webmasters—they tell you what Google is looking for in a website, and you can leverage this to make your site more visible in search results. This means pages that provide clear, trustworthy content in an accessible layout.

Located in Santa Rosa, California, Fitz Designz specializes in elegant, functional websites and digital marketing, helping clients reach their target audience. For more information on our services, contact us here.