On January 20, 2012, Search Engine Land columnist Matt McGee revealed a post that was quite interesting. Through email, he interviewed an actual Google Quality Rater asking the man all sorts of detailed questions. The Rater approached Matt because he wanted to clear up the misconceptions about what Quality Raters do and what their jobs are.
While the process itself is interesting, as a copywriter I was, of course, drawn to the mentions of content. I’m going to give you some highlights below along with my thoughts, but I encourage you to read the Search Engine Land article completely when you have the time.
Who are the Quality Raters?
Haven’t heard of Google’s Quality Raters? These are a group of folks that began working for Google (indirectly) in 2005. Their jobs are to rate the quality of web pages according to Google’s quality standards. Contrary to popular belief, they are not out there issuing rankings to web pages. Rather, in the words of the Quality Rater himself, “The whole point behind quality raters is not to rate the actual web, but rather rate how well Google is doing at providing quality results.”
This army of experts looks at web pages for the purpose of determining whether Google’s algorithm is delivering the best results that are the most relevant.
What is Google Looking for?
Basically… content. Quality, relevant content. Search engine optimization is as it has always been: word-based. Text is what drives the engines from the keywords you research to the anchor text in links pointing back to your site (and everything in between).
The Rater has this to say in response to one question:
When you click through from a Google search result page, what are you looking for on the web page that you visit?
“When looking at a site, I always check for spam signals first — keyword stuffing, hidden text, sneaky redirects, and the like. Once I know it’s a good site, I start to look at the page as a person who would type the query in Google and whether or not the content on the page would help me fulfill my needs. There are some tasks that ask about design and layout and the like, but … I really just look at content and figure out if it would be a worthwhile page for a user to see.”
Here’s your challenge for the day: visit your own site with fresh eyes (or have someone else visit) and rate yourself. Google is using four categories: Useful, Relevant, Slightly Relevant, or Off-topic. Which would your Home page fall into?
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Thanks for posting this. It’s always helpful to see how Google rates pages and what they look for in making their decisions. It’s a good reminder that even important aspects of a web page, like keywords, can be overdone, and that ultimately, it’s about content. That’s what we all strive to provide for our visitors. I also like the advice of looking at your own site with fresh eyes to see how well you’re doing. Too many people build a site and never make any improvements, which is a disservice to their customers.
Thanks Ozio. I agree 100%.