Google search quality guidelines update expand YMYL category, defines lowest quality content and more - Search Engine Land

A year ago Google updated the company’s search quality raters guidelines, and today, it has been updated once more – this time to expand on the YMYL category, it clarified what constitutes lowest quality content, simplified the definition of upsetting-offensive and the overall document has been refreshed and modernized with minor updates throughout. In fact, the old document was a 175 page PDF, the new one is 172 pages.

The last update to this document was on October 14, 2020, before that was December 5, 2019.

What is new? Here is a change log of what is new in this document:

• Expanded the definition of the YMYL subcategory ‘Groups of people’
• Refreshed guidance on how to research reputation information for websites and
  content creators
• Restructured and updated ‘Lowest Page Quality’ section; reorganized and
  refreshed examples to reflect new structure
• Simplified the definition of ‘Upsetting-Offensive’ to remove redundancy with
  Lowest Page Quality section
• Minor changes throughout (updated screenshots and URLs, wording, and
  examples for consistency; removed outdated examples; fixed typos; etc.)

YMYL – Groups of people subcategory. Google expanded this subcategory to include more examples of YMYL, your money – your life, section for this groups of people section. The updated section is named groups of people and is now defined as:

“Information about or claims related to groups of people, including but not limited to those grouped on the basis of age, caste, disability, ethnicity,...

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