Analysis of the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

This is a discussion of what has changed in latest version of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines by January 23, 2025 vs the previous one as of

March 5 2024. Below is a video version of this article.

Article Summary

The article analyses the latest updates to Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, revised on January 23 performed by Nertis SEO Agency. Key changes include a stricter enforcement of beneficial page purposes, added emphasis on value-added content, clear examples of content repackaging, and expanded definitions of deceptive information and design. The author underscores the implications for affiliate publishers in gambling and finance, recommending framing clear beneficial purposes, enabling greater transparency, creating avoidance of conflict of interest policies, featuring real and genuine content creators, and reduced filler content, etc.

What are Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines?

Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are used by human raters (evaluators) who visit websites and do page quality ranking. There are lots of reasons to believe that Google trains its artificial intelligence (machine learning) on the scores assigned by human evaluators. 

The Guidelines document the issues of page quality, the quality score (ranging from the lowest to highest), what influences the quality, gives a notion of (understanding) search user needs, how to tell if these needs have been met or not, as well as gives lots of examples and practical information on how to assign scores and understand page quality and user needs.

What has changed (in short)?

Beneficial purpose enforcement

Definition of the Lowest Quality Pages was expanded to include a requirement to grade the lowest pages “created to benefit the owner of the website (e.g. to make money) with very little or no attempt to benefit website visitors or otherwise serve a beneficial purpose”, i.e. page don’t have a beneficial or helpful purpose.

No value added is the reason to grade MC the lowest

If the MC was created with little to no effort, has little to no originality and the MC adds no value compared to similar pages on the web then the page shall be given the lowest quality.

Content repackaging, i.e. low effort, originality and value added have been illustrated by example

Distinction is made between all or almost all MC reposted vs much of the content is done so. Examples of low effort, low originality and low added value include no curation reposting from the social as well as the"Best" lists based on existing reviews and lists with little original content.

Expanded use-cases on Deceptive information and Deceptive design

Deceptive information about the website or content creators now includes A webpage or website with "fake" owner or content creator profiles as well as Factually inaccurate and deceptive information about creator expertise.

Definition of deceptive design now includes Pages with deceptively designed buttons or links and Pages with a misleading title or a title that has nothing to do with the content on the page, i.e. making people who come to the page expecting content related to the title will feel tricked or deceived.

Expired domain abuse and Site reputation abuse sections points to affiliate content

This includes payday loans and casino-related content on the former elementary school’s website. Or a medical site hosting a third-party advertising page about "best casinos" that readers wouldn’t expect and that’s being placed on the site to rank better due to the established site’s ranking signals.

Indication of where the most helpful MC has to be displayed 

The guide now sets the order of content placement saying (in 5.2.2.) that a high quality page has the most helpful MC placed most prominently. It means that the most helpful content (that required most of the efforts to be produced) should be prominently displayed near the top of the webpage.

Filler content is equated to poor user experience

The guidelines give a definition of filler, i.e. “low-effort content that occupies valuable and prominent space without providing value or without being helpful or satisfying for the primary purpose of the page”. A filler can result in a poor experience for people who visit the page and thus deserves a Low Rating if the page:

• Contains a large amount of low quality and unhelpful filler, causing a poor experience for people visiting the page, 
• Contains a large amount visually prominent filler that makes it difficult to find the helpful MC, causing frustration for people visiting the page.

Implications for Affiliate Publishers

Beneficial purpose has to be named and framed on the website. Namely, "we do this, in order for customers to become this". I suggest reflecting it on the Homepage, About us and How we do reviews pages.

Beneficial purpose has to be proven and substantiated by facts. This may include - depending on the purpose - fact on money saved by customers or money returned to customers or happy customer reviews, etc.

Avoidance of Conflict of Interests policy shall be produced and featured on page. The policy should be featured on Ad elements, like blocks with affiliate links, and include a reference to, for example, how the Editorial team is independent and separated in operations from the Advertisement or Account management team.  

The “Value added” has to be observed and followed through the content strategy-making as well as each assignment for content production. 

Fake content creators need to be supplemented by actual (real) persons with at least some reputation.This includes - obviously - featuring their real names, credentials and links to social profiles.

Claims as to the expertness of the site and content authors shall be muted. It’s time to be humble. 

It’s worth investing into promotion of an author's profile (on the website) and increasing their overall authoritativeness. This may include 2 things: creating author profiles and investing in promoting these pages. 

Fact-based titles must be prioritised over catchy and clickbait ones. Special care shall be given to claims and promises. 

Private Blogging Networks (PBNs) made of domains that contain unrelated content are likely to lose their attractiveness and their effectiveness will diminish.  

The most helpful content shall be identified per each page type. This will normally be the content which requires most of the efforts to produce, i.e. summary or analysis that comes from the rest of the content. Such content shall be prominently placed such as to be easily discoverable and consumed by a customer with no efforts.

“Filler” content shall be reduced in size and in visual prominence. The guides and reviews should become lean and streamlined to what the greatest value you - as a site owner - bring.   

Include extensive contact information. This may take the form of a hub of contact information pages: how to contact us for press inquiries, for money return issues, for complaints, etc. Consider putting real names and a real credentials on this page.

Putting the changes in the context: what does it mean?

Main concepts of the document

The central concept of the document is the Purpose of the page (section 2.2.). The document says: “The purpose of a page is the reason or reasons why the page was created” The whole goal of page quality (PQ) rating is “to determine how well a page achieves its purpose”. Importantly, the guide says that “Websites and pages should be created to help people”, i.e. have a Helpful or Beneficial purpose.

Another important concept is Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics (section 2.3.), including those that could cause harm if the content is not accurate and trustworthy, featuring Health, Financial Security, Society, etc. Notably, for pages about clear YMYL topics, the document has very high Page Quality rating standards (vs other topics).

Understanding the content of the page (section 2.4.) is essential for PQ rating and it says that all of the content on a webpage can be classified as one of the following:

1. Main Content (MC), 
2. Supplementary Content (SC), or 
3. Advertisements/Monetization (Ads).

Section  2.4.3 discusses the issue of how to identify advertisement or monetization and tell it from the main content. So it says that for the purpose of this guideline, we shall consider monetized links on any type of the pages to be advertised, which is to say that a whole bunch of affiliate content will be considered advertisements.

Section 2. 5. 2 tells that in page quality rating tasks the evaluator will need to identify who created the main content on the page. This is to say, find the author of the content.

Consideration that apply to page quality rating

Section 3 of the document called “Overall page quality rating” is central to the understanding of page quality and in subsection 3.1 that’s called page quality rating consideration, discusses the considerations that apply to page quality rating.

It tells the page quality rating is the process of determining how well a page achieves its purpose and the consideration include:

1. The purpose of the page itself,
2. The potential of the page or website to cause harm 
3. The topic of the page, including your money or your life topics, 
4. The type of websites, including 
5. small hobby websites versus large corporate websites, 
6. websites that involve financial transactions versus websites that don't require payments and don’t collect personal information.
7. websites with the content created by ordinary people versus those created by professionals. 
8. Information provided by the websites and content creator. This is to say, bio of authors, about us pages and so on, so on
9. The quality of the main content (MC). This is important to consider the extent to which the main content is satisfying or helps the page achieve its purpose. 
10. Title of the page, 
11. The role of advertisement or supplementary content on the page, 
12. reputation of the websites and content creator, i.e. trustworthiness of the page, which includes expertness. Experience, authority, and trust.

Quality of the Main Content

Section 3. 2 discusses the Quality of the main content as the document distinguishes between: 

• advertisement, 
• main content and 
• supplementary content.  

The quality of the main content is the most important consideration for page quality rating. The main content plays a major role in determining how well a page achieves its purpose.

The quality of the main content can be determined by the amount of 

1. effort, 
2. originality, 
3. talent, and 
4. skills 

that have been invested into producing the page. 

Effort

So the effort is the extent to which humans have been actively working to create the satisfying content. It specifically says that for pages like social media posts, forum discussions, where the number of participants, the level of participation and the depth of conversation is important. The contributions from multiple individuals add up to a significant amount of total human efforts.

Accuracy

It's important for your money, your life topics, including financial and health topics,  where it's very much important to rate the extent to which the content is accurate and consistent with a well established expert consensus. The guide in this section 3. 2 invites a rater to think carefully about what helps the page achieve its purpose and what makes the main content satisfying for users.

Reputation

Reputation of the website and content creator is discussed in section 3. 3 The reputation of the websites, which says that for your money, your life topics, the reputation of the website should be judged by what experts say. So it  focuses on things like expert sources, and including professional societies, which are the strong evidence of positive reputation.

E-E-A-T

Section 3. 4 Discusses experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust, E E A T.  These are the components of trust. And it says that, for example, product reviews, shall be honest and willing to help others make informed purchasing decisions rather than solely to sell a product.

Pages achieve their purpose when created by people with a wealth of personal experience who personally test or use the product. And finally, trustworthiness. This overlapping concept can be seriously undermined by the conflict of interest.  So reviews produced by the manufacturer themselves or reviews from influencers who are paid to promote a product are not trustworthy due to the conflict of interest. According to section 3.3. these pages should be granted low E-E-A-T. 

Section 3.4.1 gives an illustration, an example of what type of pages should be created by experience versus expert input. For example,  when it comes to saving for retirement, the experience part may include reviews by people who have a first hand experience using some services, whereas the expert's part should, for example, advise on how to invest in retirement, how much to save, what kind of assets to invest, how much money will need to retire by a specific age. This type of information shall be better left to the experts.

Section 4.0  discusses the lowest quality pages. What distinguishes this section in this final edit of January 2025 is that  there has been one paragraph added. The lowest rating is required if the page is created to benefit the owner of the website.

For example, to make money with a little or no attempt to benefit website visitors or otherwise serve a beneficial purpose. This was not in place  in the previous  edition of the guide. And this is to say that the pages created to catch traffic from Google and to make money for the website owner are now under fire  and they shall be considered the lowest quality by definition. 

Sections 4.5.1 says any site that handles personal, private or sensitive data must provide extensive contact information. This includes sites that ask users to create passwords, share personal information, or conduct financial transactions.

Section 4.5.3 focuses on Deceptive Purpose: The page or the website superficially appear to have one purpose, but in fact exist for a different reason.

A webpage claims to offer an independent review or share other information about a product, but is in fact created to make money for the owner of the website without attempting to help users. For example, the MC may contain intentionally misleading or inaccurate information created with the sole purpose of getting users to click on monetized links or buy the product.