We have been tipped off to a revised Google Quality Rating Guidelines handbook that has been leaked. It has been over three and a half years since we last saw a leaked Google Quality Raters Handbook and that document was from back in April 2007.
Pot Pie Girl found a copy of the March 30, 2011 version 3.18 of the Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines handbook used by Google Search Quality Raters around the world. It’s 125 page long, and you can find it linked off their post here.
We’d had it posted earlier ourselves, but Google said that it was a copyrighted document, and since he hadn’t done any fair use work with it (such as excerpting it), so that we needed to remove it from our site or we’d get a formal legal request. So head to Pot Pie Girl if you want it, for as long as it’s there.
Clearly, there are a lot of good tips on what Google considers to be quality versus not quality. What you can learn from documents like this is how Google classifies types of content and pages.
Understanding how Google quality raters are trained and how they work can be useful for all SEOs.
Hat tip to E Brundige.
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Image from MedusArt/Shutterstock.
Related Topics: Google: SEO
It is interesting, and reassuring, to read some of those guidelines. I wonder though how often the quality rater does get it wrong? Some of the items that Google has emphasised could suggest that these are areas that in the past a manual reviewer has just got wrong – such as lots of adverts, using affiliate links etc.
If Google forbids you from publishing it due to the fact that it is one of their copyrighted documents, then that makes it legit. Went and grabbed it straight away. I would advice anyone else who wants to see it do so as well.
@Brian Nelson, had searchengineline not published the copyright infringement tidbit, I would have never believed this document belonged to google since there’s nothing in it to support that claim. Nothing I could find, anyway.
This is either the best link bait ever, or you really don’t know that you’ve published an article that links to nothing but a 404 page. No guidelines in sight. ;)
Don’t spose you have a link for the PDF that still works?
@Brian Nelson thank you for your recommendation. I would really like to research this document in depth but I got here too late to see it. If you want to reach out for me on Twitter or Facebook, I am always “RobinGood” and would very much appreciate your help on this.
Many thanks
Does anyone have a copy of this doc they could send over. I’d like it for light reading !! LOL I tried PotPieGirl, but google asked that it be removed from her site based on the same legal issues.. Anyways, if you want to share – email it on over !!
@Barry, there was another one, leaked in 2009…. ;-)
Regards
Nico