Are Google’s search quality assessment guidelines a ranking factor?

The search quality evaluator’s guide is a document used by third-party quality evaluators to inform Google of which changes to the algorithm can improve the user’s search experience.

It sounds important. So does the high score of human quality assessors help your organic search rankings?

If you have heard some buzz about Google Search Quality Assessor’s Guide But you are not sure what they are used for, you might think so.

Let’s take a look at why people might think these guidelines are a ranking factor, the evidence for and against it, and whether there is evidence that the document is part of Google’s algorithm.

Disclaimer: Guidelines for evaluating search quality as a ranking factor

in 2011, Jennifer Ledbetter (AKA PotPieGirl) found URL scoring guidelines that were kept secret at the time in Google search.

I wrote this article shortly after, when Google’s manual URL quality assessor training manual was 125 pages long.

URL ratings seem to be one step lower than search quality ratings, as this line in the introduction proves: “When you can rate URLs, you will successfully become a successful search quality rater!”

Initially, it was speculated that because they patrolled the evaluation pages on the Internet and made recommendations, if these quality evaluators encountered a page that violated Google’s guidelines, they might impose manual penalties.

However, these are not members of the spam group. They are not Google employees at all; quality assessors are now and always have been third-party contractors.

As far as I know, there are at least five companies that provide search quality evaluators for Google and other search engines, including Microsoft’s Universal Human Related System:

And review This article is from nearly 10 years ago, We see that as the algorithm changes (such as All the updates we know ——And much more than what we have not done), Google’s goals remain basically unchanged.

The important thing is that you can still provide a great search experience today:

• How to interpret the query.
• Understand the intent.
• The context of language and location.
• Timeliness.
• Specificity.
• Page utility; usefulness of content.

The things that got you into trouble with Google at the time still give you headaches today—keyword stuffing, sneaky redirects, and mass-produced/rotated or repetitive content.

Search quality assessment guidelines as evidence of ranking factors

The search quality evaluator is used to evaluate proposed changes to the algorithm so that Google can measure the impact of each change in a small test and adjust (or cancel the update) accordingly.

Their feedback was not—and never was—a direct ranking factor.

However…

Do I believe that the evaluator is looking for what Google wants to see on the page?

Absolutely.

If you choose to ignore Google’s expressed desire to view specific content on the web, do I think you’re crazy?

Too.

Ben Gomes, Google’s senior vice president of education, has been working at the company a few months after its founding.He served as Vice President of Search Engineering in 2018, when He told CNBC:

“You can think of the rater guide as where we want the search algorithm to go. They won’t tell you how the algorithm ranks the results, but they basically show what the algorithm should do.”

When you understand what Google itself considers to be quality content, it is much easier to create quality content and optimize it for search.

Evidence against the use of search quality evaluator guidelines as a ranking factor

Google tells us How exactly do human quality assessors help improve search results:

• They provide feedback on search experiments to inform which potential changes are most useful.
• They help Google classify information to improve its system.
• They use the evaluator’s guidelines to do this.

Remember, Google is a large and complex information retrieval system.

The feedback provided by the quality assessor may affect How the algorithm worksBut they have no direct influence on the output (search results) of these algorithms.

Search quality assessment guidelines as a ranking factor: our judgment

The Search Quality Assessor’s Guide gives us an in-depth understanding of what Google considers to be a good user experience and quality content, which may be beneficial.

With the improved searcher experience you will provide, implementing some of the teachings in these guidelines as best practices may help your SEO strategy.

But they are not a ranking factor.

Bottom line: Google does not use its search quality assessment guidelines as search ranking signals.

Featured image: Paul Bobita