Video: Google Speaks About Search Quality Raters

Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has published a video talking about a topic that Google has never really talked about publicly before – Google Quality Raters.

The video goes through the process used by Google with these Quality Raters. Matt Cutts specifically says these quality raters have no direct impact on the Google search results. He explains how what they do is used in the overall Google search quality process:

• Google Quality Raters rate URLs if they are good, bad, spam and other classifications
• Then when the Google engineers changes the algorithm
• The engineers can run queries to see what changes
• Based on the Quality Raters ratings, an engineer would want to see better results ranking higher in their new algorithm compared to before
• Then engineer does a side by side (blind taste test) directed to the Quality Raters and the Raters says I like left side or right side
• The engineer then can see those test results and if the results to look better overall based on those rating they might want to expand on it
• Then Google sends out a live test to a small percent of users and run the tests on live (non raters) people

Here is the video of Matt Cutts explaining this:

More on Google Quality Raters:

• Google & Human Quality Reviews: Old News Returns
• The Google Quality Raters Handbook
• Google Quality Raters Can Rate Your Site Without Seeing It
• Download The Latest Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines
• Google Quality Raters Can’t Cause Site To Drop In Rankings
• An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.