Does Google use Quality Score similar to Google Ads as part of its organic search ranking algorithm?
This has been debated over the years, and there are even articles telling you how to optimize it.
But is there actually an organic quality score? Will it affect your rankings?
Let’s explore some resources and discussions about the whole Google Organic Quality Score concept and see if we can find the truth.
Disclaimer: Site Quality Score is a ranking factor
This topic can cause some confusion as there are several things at play here.
What we know:
Google Ads Use Quality Score.
This is a number between 1-10 that Google assigns to PPC ads based on three factors:
- Expected click-through rate (CTR): The likelihood that your ad will be clicked when it is displayed.
- Ad relevance: How well your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search.
- Landing page experience: How relevant and useful your landing page is to users who click on your ad.
So when you hear the idea that Google uses Quality Score to evaluate a website, you might think it’s the Quality Score used by Google Ads.
Do not.
Google does not use its Google Ads Quality Score in organic rankings.
So the question is:
Does Google use a quality score to rate entire sites (maybe between 1-10, 0-100, or other values)?
We know that Google thinks EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trust) Important guiding concepts for every website that publishes content.
So if Google thinks it’s important to see the EAT of an individual content creator, isn’t it equally important that the website that publishes that content is?
If so, can you quantify it with PageRank-style scores?
Think of it this way: I’m going to publish an article.
Is it more likely to rank on sites like search engine journals? [Insert Random Blog Name Here Nobody Has Ever Heard Of]?
Yes, this is basically the much-debated concept of domain authority (not to be confused with domain authority, Moz metrics, which we debunk in another chapter of this guide) – some domains have inherent SEO advantages over others.
An organic Quality Score like this means that even if a page lacks other quality signals, it can still enjoy the ranking advantage of a site’s Quality Score.
Does Search Engine Journal, New York Times or Wikipedia (or any other major site you can think of) have an automatic ranking advantage over all/most of their competitors?
Could it be because Google assigns them some site-wide organic quality score?
Evidence of Website Quality Score as a Ranking Factor
exist 2011, Google’s Michael Wyszomierski gives feedback on Google’s latest algorithm changes. That update was Google Panda, and it largely affected sites with low-quality content. He said, in part:
“…it is important for webmasters to know that low-quality content in parts of a site can affect a site’s overall ranking. Therefore, if you believe you have been affected by this change, you should evaluate your Everything on your website and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain.
Removing low-quality pages or moving them to a different domain can help you rank for higher-quality content. “
Does this suggest that Google can use a quality score consisting of some collection of signals to detect low quality sites?
Many SEOs, including Jeff Ferguson Google ranks pages, not websites.
While this is theoretically true, Wyszomierski’s statement raises the big question of how low-quality content on parts of a site might affect the ranking ability of the entire site’s content.
Did we get an answer? 2012when Google patented website quality score?
The patent includes the following:
“This specification describes how the system determines how a site’s score, for example, a website or other collection of data resources, as seen by search engines, represents a measure of site quality.
Scores are based on actions that indicate users seek and prefer a particular site and the number of resources found in a particular site.
The site quality score for a particular site can be determined by calculating a ratio representing a user’s interest in the site, a molecule reflected in user queries directed to the site for various queries.
A site’s site quality score can be used as a signal to rank resources, or to rank search results identifying resources that are found in one site relative to resources found in another site. “
As always, just because Google owns a certain patent doesn’t provide clear evidence that it’s being used in a search algorithm.
Beyond that, we have guesses 2017when Moz released a whiteboard on organic quality ratings on Friday.
They said before the speech:
“While there’s no hard evidence that it exists, organic quality score is a concept that has been on a lot of SEO’s minds over the years.”
exist 2020Seer Interactive published a guide on how to optimize your website for organic search using the Google Quality Score component.
This guide does not assume Quality Score is a ranking factor.
Instead, they hope to provide PPC practitioners with a new perspective on optimizing content for organic search.
Google Quality Score as a Ranking Factor: Our Verdict
To date, Google has neither confirmed nor denied that organic site quality score is a ranking factor.
The website Quality Score patent filed in 2012 was at best circumstantial evidence that Google could use Quality Score as a ranking factor (or at least considered doing so at the time).
This makes sense.
A site should have a basic authority level (or even a topic relevance score) that it can pass to new pages based on its link profile (internal and inbound).
So the question remains: is there a domain/site quality score that can be used as a benchmark for new pages?
Wyszomierski’s comment is an interesting hint that something of this nature might play a role in Google’s algorithm.
If a site can be harmed by low-quality content, is it also reasonable to assume that a site can be helped organically through continued publishing? high-quality content?
While we’ve ruled out the idea of Google using Google Ads Quality Score to rank, the principles behind it — especially in terms of intent, relevance, and usefulness — can easily be applied to organic search.
like understanding EAT and Search Quality Rating Guidelines Can help you with targeted SEO.
We cannot call Organic Quality Score a definitive Google ranking factor without direct confirmation at the time of writing.
But it is possible.
Featured image: Robin Biong/Search Engine Magazine
