Guidelines for Rating Page Quality

Speaker 1 0:02

Hello and welcome to . Seo is not that hard . I'm your host , ed Dawson , the founder of KeyWordsPeopleUsecom . These solutions find the questions people ask online . In today's episode , I'm going to cover part 7 in our series covering the final parts of the quality rating process guidelines . In the previous 6 episodes , we've been covering the Google Quality Rater guidelines and what the key considerations are that needed to be taken into account by raters when rating a page . The last episode we covered what Google considers to be high and highest quality content . Today I'm going to cover the final sections on page quality , which is to cover a few specific site examples Google cover in the Rater guidelines , which are Encyclopedia sites , error pages , forum and QA pages . And then , finally , we'll go to the frequently asked questions by raters that Google has collated and the answers to those questions is .

Speaker 1 0:49

There's some valuable insights in those answers . The first type of website that the guidelines specifically pick out for giving extra detail on are Encyclopedia pages . Now , most people probably think of Wikipedia when it comes to this , and Wikipedia does indeed get mentioned specifically within these guidelines , but they also state that there are many Encyclopedia type websites , and there's some highly respected on the standard references , while others are edited by anonymous users with no oversight or fact checking . So the first thing they say is to differentiate between those sites which have expert editors and the content is vouched for by the website , and it's kind of standard reference . And then it talks about websites which are more user generated , in particular Wikipedia . And they say about Wikipedia that it does have , in general , a good reputation , it's very popular and it's genuinely good for accuracy . But because there's no single author or organization for any page or article , then the users need the raters need to check individual articles to evaluate the quality of the main content . So they say they show an example of a non-YNYL topic which has got a good amount of accurate information . It's trustworthy because of the external references that are made and that should be , and could be , rated in the high range . They say that in many cases , though , if there's not enough main content with not enough external references , then a Wikipedia page be graded as medium and then the worst , the lowest side . If there's factoring accuracy or very little main contact on our page in Wikipedia , then it should be given the lowest rating . But it's interesting that they pick out encyclopedia pages as a particular one where they want to give extra guidance on , and that's potentially because maybe previously Wikipedia was being rated maybe too highly by quality raters who maybe trusted it a little bit too implicitly , when really they should be checking on to each article exactly how well it matches because of the issue around there being no set author who can vouch for the expertise on a page .

Speaker 1 3:13

The next one's quite interesting and that's how to rate pages with error messages or no main content . Now you might think that this was an error page , the problem with the site , that that might mean low value , low quality , but it's not actually the case . The only point where they might say to mark something as the lowest quality would be where there's deliberately no main content , so just page after page which have no main content . The pages are all the same supplementary content and they just have add after add after add . So that's where there's no beneficial purpose to the page . It's just ads , so it's lowest quality , but it might look just like it's broken , but it's actually deliberately done like that . The next sort is where they would say market is low , where there's a page that hasn't properly loaded and has no main content through an error . So not due to a deliberate action , but just due to a temporary error , where a website might have a positive reputation but it's just not showing any main content , that would be to be marked down as low .

Speaker 1 4:16

Now then , when you get to actual error pages like a 404 page , then this can actually be marked as medium . You know it's actually doing its job . While the actual page might be broken , the error message is . So if you've gone to a page it doesn't exist 404 page then that's the right thing to do , to actually to give that so it's a medium . The example that shows actually an amazoncom 404 page which just basically says yeah , this page doesn't exist and it's bare minimum to show to the user that the page is broken and the only helpful part of it is a link back to the home page . So that actually gets a medium . And you can actually get to high and highest for a 404 page by making it a little bit more creative with your page . So that's putting on some original content and then helping the user navigate to the best place for them .

Speaker 1 5:15

So they have an example of a high quality 404 page where it clearly says you know what the problem is and then gives a search box so that people can search to try and find the content they want , and the website itself has got a positive reputation . And then they've even got one even better than that , which is a gives the highest level , which is actually the New Yorker , and on that page there's quite a funny cartoon that explains that the page doesn't exist as a problem . And then it gives a very good example , a good search box where you can put quite an advanced search in to find out what you're after . And the website itself has got a very positive website reputation , so that for an arrow page can actually be classed as the highest quality content , which is really interesting . So it just goes to show . Don't forget about how your site has a positive reputation . Handle those errors and what the error pages show and they're not just the default ones and you actually do something useful with them to try and help people , if they do land in the wrong place , to get to the right place as easily as possible .

Speaker 1 6:16

Next up , we've got the higher ratings for forums and Q&A pages , and this is where they give us some extra detail about how to look at these as compared to a site where it's generated by just one author . So obviously make it clear that you may have more than one person on this . The people are likely only to be identified by using them on alias , and that's fine . People pages can still be rated higher , highest , even if it's not clear who the author is . On this type of page they go to discuss how to judge EAT on these and a lot of the time it comes purely from the content itself . So that's where , for example , you've got lots of people discussing a thread in depth and they will be sort of demonstrating their experience on the way that they talk about what they've done , and also other people might be commenting on their certain person's experience in their response . So you can build that orp purely on page without having to go elsewhere , because it's really hard to find information on these authors otherwise , because they could just be in this forum .

Speaker 1 7:31

Goes on to point out that the highest quality forum pages will have very satisfying conversations with a participation from a wide range of users who've put a lot of effort into their posts and they've got a lot of experience and expertise on the topic , and it's the depth of discussion , the unique insights and the sharing of experiences that someone might have access to in their real world community that makes them the real highest quality ones . Low quality forums , where the response is lack of effort , so there might be very few responses or the responses don't go into any depth , the discussion never really gets going , there's no real demonstration of experience or expertise and there might be mild inaccuracies . And on top of that , if you've got a forum where people aren't interacting with respect , then there's like where there might be sort of the aggressive people or people who are very respectful that might put off other people joining the discussion . Those come lower the quality . So yeah , so it's really important if you're maintaining a forum that you have sort of like rules in place that you enforce to make sure that people treat each other respectfully . Then we've got the lowest quality forums and there where the advice is harmfully misleading , contradicts consensus , encourages harm towards them , people or other participants , so yeah , so that's the real lowest quality one where it's just junk basically .

Speaker 1 9:01

Now , an interesting little addition I've got on here is a challenge is how to rate pages with little to no participation . So that's basically new pages . So if you've come to a forum with a new page where it's only recently started , it might take time for a page and a discussion to get going . So if you come across one of these where it's new , then they're just told to rate it generally as medium . Because unless there's particular low quality attributes in there because the page needs time to achieve its purpose , then it comes to pages like this that have been there for over time . If there's no participation in a discussion or any superficial discussion and there's no real answers have been put in , then that's when they should put down a low quality rating . So it's interesting to see how these pages on forums get a bit of leeway . To start with they're given time essentially to see if that discussion actually builds up .

Speaker 1 9:58

A final challenge on forums that they discuss is where the discussion on a page starts to drift . So you might have a page that's really high quality to start with and the discussion is really good , but it may drift over time to become combative or it drifts into misleading or spammy content . So in this case the users are told to rank it as medium as long as nothing potentially harmful happens when it drifts . So that's quite a bit of leeway that a page gets given on forums that as long as the start of it's good , then the end of it can turn . It can still become a medium and not become low quality . They do give a whole host of examples of different forum discussions and where they fall from low to highest , and it's worth looking at that and obviously , if you just follow the link in the notes to the actual quality guidelines used themselves , so you can see them . But it is interesting how forums do seem to get a lot of leeway compared to individually authored pages and especially , as we've seen with all the recent Google content updates or the core updates , how forum content and discussion content like this seems to be being pushed at the moment by Google as quality content , which I know has confused a lot of people .

Understanding Google's Guidelines for Page Quality

Speaker 1 11:12

The final thing we'll look at today is the FAQ section . There's a page quality ratings FAQ which we can assume Google has built from questions that Rater has asked the most commonly . Now there's 10 questions and answers in here . I'm not going to go through all of them . If you want to see them all , go to the doc , download it , have a read , which I strongly suggest you should do anyway , but definitely that if you want to see them all , go and read it . But I'm going to pick out a few that have got some decent takeaways in that you can actually take when you think about your own site .

Speaker 1 11:43

The first one to pick out is the question are we just giving high quality ratings to pages that look good ? And the answer is no . The goal is to do the exact opposite . These steps are designed to help you analyze the page without using a superficial does it look good approach . So this shows that it's not just fancy design that makes a page high quality . It's the actual content of the page that's important . The main content to the page is also the trust , how well trusted the site is , what the experience of the person is all those things that we've been talking about in the past few episodes . It's not just about design . Now , good design can obviously help . Good design can come into it in certain places , but it's not the only goal of a high page to look good and some of the examples they give . You know , if you look at the examples of high and high quality pages , some of them definitely don't look good , but the content , the authors , the reputation is all very good and that's what's important . The next question I wanted to pick out was this one Aren't some types of pages always low quality , such as celebrity gossip ?

Speaker 1 12:39

And the answer given is for almost any type of page or informational topic , there is a range of content quality . For example , there are both high and low quality celebrity gossip pages . The purpose of these pages to share interesting , accurate information about celebrities . There may be benefits in celebrity stories that inspire others or help people going through similar challenges . A celebrity gossip page is high quality If it is accurate and interesting information . There's no characteristics of low or lowest quality and comes from a reasonably reliable source . So here they're trying to say that you know there isn't just any particular type of page that is consistently low quality , other . Obviously , if you go back to the earlier guidelines about the lowest and low , whether there's misleading or harmful intent behind the page , then obviously that is going to be always low quality . But just the topic isn't going to make it low quality . So it's not , let's say again , slow but you gossip , which may not interest many people . There are people who are interested in it so and there are people who can get a value from it , so they can get high quality in that , in that niche . So there's no specific niche that's always going to be downgraded . The next one I wanted to pick out is slightly similar but it comes from a different point of view so it's worth sharing here .

Speaker 1 13:53

And the question is some of these criteria seem unfair . For example , some art pages do not have a purpose . Are these pages low quality ? And the answer given is art pages do have a purpose . Artistic expression , pages created for artistic expression do not deserve the low quality ratings simply because they have no other purpose . Artistic expression , humor , entertainment , sharing photos and videos etc . Are all valid and beneficial page purposes . So this goes sort of hammer's home , the point that it doesn't have to have a high purpose , doesn't have to have a necessary transactional purpose for something to be of high value . Just , you know , artistic expression is really high value . Even that may not be to some people , to many people it is high value . And just having that expression and things like humor and entertainment and just sharing photos they are all important to do have a beneficial purpose . So there's no reason for them to be marked as low quality just because of the subject .

Speaker 1 14:51

And the final one I wanted to bring up was one that I've seen conflicting advice from people on before . So I think this probably clears it up . And the question itself is how should interstitials factor into my rating and the answer is sometimes clicking on the task URL will bring up an interstitial page . You can ignore this page if your ranking criteria , if you can easily get the main content . However , if the interstitial page makes it extremely hard or impossible to get to the main content and evaluate how well the page achieves its purpose , that should factor into your page quality rating . So you know , I've seen people before say you shouldn't have interstitials . All interstitials are bad and will mark you as low quality content , and I think this here makes it clear that as long as an interstitial is easily closed and easily got passed , then it's not actually something that's a negative factor . So you can still have high and highest quality content with interstitials as long as you use a design pattern that makes it easy for people to navigate past them . So that brings us to the end of the parts of the Google Quality Rated Guidelines that explains to raters how and on what criteria they should classify web pages and sites from the lowest to the highest quality .

Speaker 1 16:03

In the next episode we'll take a look back at what lessons we can learn from everything we've covered so far . Thanks for listening . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Seo is Not that Hard is brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom , the solution to finding the questions people ask online . See why thousands of people use us every day . Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom If you want to get in touch . You'll have any questions . I'd love to hear from you . I'm at channel five on Twitter or you can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard .