On Thursday, January 23rd, Google updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF document. The last time Google updated this document was for the March 2024 spam update changes, over ten months ago. This update seems to focus on on spam and adds some additional details.
The document was expanded from 170 pages to 181 pages.
What Changed
Google posted these items in the change log:
- Updated Page Quality Lowest and Low sections to better align with Google Search Web Spam Policies; added illustrative examples
- Expanded guidance on assessing minor interpretations and intents for Needs Met ratings and added illustrative examples
- Minor changes throughout (updated rating ranges, removed outdated examples; fixed typos; updated browser requirements; etc.)
This update also refreshes some language for clarity and provides additional useful examples to help raters.
Previous Search Quality Rater Guidelines
Here are the previous versions of the search quality rater guidelines, if you want to download them all and compare them:
- Janaury 23, 2025 PDF download link
- March 5, 2024 PDF download link
- November 16, 2023 PDF download link
- December 15, 2022 PDF download link
- July 28, 2022 PDF download link
- October 19, 2021 PDF download link
- October 14, 2020 PDF download link
- December 5, 2019 PDF download link
- May 16, 2019 PDF download link
- June 20, 2018 PDF download link
- July 27, 2017 PDF download link
What Are Quality Raters & Guidelines
Google wrote these guidelines are what is used by Google's third-party search raters to help evaluate the performance of the various Google search ranking systems, and their ratings do not directly influence Google's search ranking. "The guidelines share important considerations for what content is helpful for people when using Google Search," Google added. Google's page on how to create helpful, people-first content summarizes these concepts for creators to help them self-assess their own content to be successful in Google Search, Google added.
Forum discussion at X.
