On November 19, 2015 Google officially released to the public their updated Human Evaluator Guidelines for Rating Search Results.
Google employs evaluators to rate search results whenever they make changes to their algorithm, in their quest to maintain a high relevancy for search results.When rating the search results for a given set of queries, the evaluators are instructed to think like an ordinary user, taking into account locale, language and intent.
This process helps to identify where the algorithm needs tweaking in order to produce a more relevant search result.
Google last published their Human Rating Guidelines in 2013. This latest release has taken into account the growing use of mobile.
The guidelines give us an insight into what Google thinks the search users want and an understanding of how to align our online marketing strategy to enhance our presence on the Internet.
Key Points for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that emerge from these guidelines are:
- The purpose of each page must be clear with your main content being congruent with that purpose.
- Very high quality rating standards are applied for pages that may impact on the future happiness, health, or wealth of users (online stores, online banking as well as financial, medical, legal and safety information pages). This is because a low quality may have a negative impact on the happiness, health or wealth of users.
- Web pages must be maintained and kept up-to-date with new content.
- The Reputation of your website and business matters with independent credible sources of reputation information such as customer reviews, Better Business Bureau reports are considered in grading your website’s reputation.
- High quality rating for a page are influenced by the following criteria:
- An acceptable amount of high quality Main content.
- Indication of a high level of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness
- Positive Reputation. While a page may merit a High Rating with no reputation, the High Rating cannot be used for any website that has an obvious negative reputation. A very positive reputation can be a reason for using the High Rating for an otherwise Medium Rating site.
- An acceptable amount of website information such as an “About Us” page and “Contact Information”.
- Supplementary information that will contribute towards a positive user experience on a page or website.
- Functional page design
- A Modern, mobile responsive and well maintained website.
You can see the full report here: Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.
At Canyon Marketing we are well aware of these guidelines and apply them to our SEO efforts in order to ensure the best results for our clients.
If you would like to know more about optimizing your presence on the Internet and taking advantage of the benefits of a having a “High Rating”, please contact us at info@canyonmarketing.com