Trust is the mechanism by which evaluators determine whether a page is “accurate, honest, safe and reliable” (p. 27). The degree of trust in a page depends entirely on its nature.
Google gives an example of online stores that need a secure online payment system and good customer service. He also mentions product review sites — a trustworthy review will help search engines make an informed decision, and not just try to sell the product.
Google has introduced a new table to help experts understand how to approach the assessment of experience, knowledge and credibility:
The introduction of the concept of “experience” into the E-A-T concept is consistent with many Google updates and posts over the past few years, especially regarding the content of product reviews.
Google pays special attention to the extent to which content creators have “the necessary life experience on this topic.” Having significant experience contributes to trust.
Google uses an example of a product review — someone who has personally used the product has more experience than someone who has not used it, which creates more trust. When assessing trust, the most important “family member E-E-A-T”, evaluators should take into account:
What the site says about itself on the “About the Site” page or other profile pages.
What others say about the site or its creators (reviews or recommendations of third parties).
What is visible on the page is actual evidence that the author of the content can be trusted (for example, real evidence that he did what he claims to be an expert in).
Google is also adding an important new detail about the conflict of interest. The product manufacturer’s review is not trustworthy, nor is the review of an influential person who was paid to promote the product.
YMYL Topics: Experience or Expertise? – 3.4.1
Google has introduced a new table to determine what experience or knowledge is needed for YMYL content. This table is designed to answer the question of whether everyday experience or real knowledge is needed for various topics such as medical conditions, voting and retirement savings:
Source: Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines, page 28
This new section indicates that if the author of the content is not an absolute expert on the topic of YMYL, this does not mean that the content is not trustworthy. In certain situations, people sharing their stories based on their own experiences can be considered trustworthy content.
Harming yourself or others – Section 4.2
In the previous version of QRG, Google indicated that YMYL themes are determined based on their ability to harm the user. In the new version, Google has presented a detailed table with examples of what is considered harmful and what is not:
Source: Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines, page 32
And a similar table explaining what it means if the content is harmful to groups
Source: Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines, page 33
These nuances are interesting, given most of the public discussions about freedom of speech on various social platforms in 2022.
In its definition of harmful content, Google seems to draw a clear line between freedom of speech and violence/harassment. The company also provides clear examples of “harmful false information”, including several conspiracy theories popular on the Internet, which are either clearly inaccurate, contradict the established opinion of experts, or are unfounded:
Source: Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines, p. 34
Absence of E-E-A-T – Section 5.1
Google gives examples of what the absence of an appropriate E-E-A-T level looks like for the topic or purpose of the page. Here are some examples (page 51):
“The author of the content has no personal experience, for example, a review about a restaurant written by a person who has never eaten in this restaurant.
The author of the content does not have professional experience, for example, an article on how to jump with a parachute written by a person who has no experience in this field.
The site or content creator is not an authoritative or trustworthy source on the topic of the page, for example, downloading tax forms on a culinary site.
The page or site is not trustworthy according to its purpose, for example, a shopping page with minimal customer service information.”
These examples help conceptualize the different roles that each letter in E-E-A-T plays in evaluating the quality of a page.
Updating the language throughout the document
Throughout the document, Google seems to be editing its language to make it more inclusive, for example, replacing “webmaster” with “site owner” and removing some gender pronouns (“self” becomes “self”).
Pay attention to where Google is heading with QRG. The Quality Assessment Guide is an essential document for anyone working in search marketing, as it gives us a guide to where Google wants to direct its algorithms.
Reading between the lines of the wording in this document, you can understand what Google is paying attention to in terms of the quality of content, user experience and E-E-A-T websites.
Following these recommendations will help ensure that your site and company are visible in Google search and, ideally, will not be adversely affected by any algorithm updates or other sanctions.
Here we will describe the basic things that are needed to train a team of linkbuilders (and in general to understand the scheme of working with links). The article is hardcore, the material is presented in great detail. Let’s go!
Reference ranking factors
What are links for in SEO? As part of the promotion of the project, each page of the site has a certain weight on the Internet. To understand the impact any page has on the search engine, use a special formula. PageRank (PR) is a patented formula for calculating the weight of pages on the Internet:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
The values are used for the calculation:
A is a document
d is a damping factor (the probability of a user switching to a document)
n is a set of documents referring to A
PR(T1-n) – the number of links referring to the document
C1-n is the number of outgoing links from any document of the set n