On May 16, 2019, Google released the latest Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), more recently called the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

You can download the latest QRG here, or via our mirror here.

Update: Get the September 2019 version here.

What are the Quality Rater Guidelines?

Google hires “quality raters”, people who visit websites and evaluate their quality. Their feedback doesn’t directly impact your site; it goes to engineers who update the Google algorithm in an effort to display great websites to their users. The guidelines give us great insight as to what Google considers a quality web page.

Google Core Algorithm Update Coming?

Last year, about two weeks after the 2018 QRG was released, the August 2018 Broad Core Algorithm Update rolled out. It was nice to have the QRG available to look at some of the ways Google evaluates page quality and website quality.

The release of the 2019 QRG doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a Board Core Algorithm Update in Jun 2019, however, we are due for one and there have been some tremors in search results over the last couple of weeks.

It’s also good to see some key points in the QRG which will almost definitely be factors in the next algorithm update, such as interstitials and page quality.

2018 vs 2019 Google Quality Rater Guidelines

There’s really nothing to see here for my existing clients. All webmasters can benefit from the QRG. To me the big takeaway is that Google is going to keep trying to make search results better by evaluating content quality and page quality. If you ave read the 2018 QRG and want to know precisely what has changed be sure to see the great annual write up and comparison here by Jennifer Slegg.

 

Len
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On June 1, 2019   /   SEO News & Tips   /   2 Comments
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