Do Humans Check Your SEO?

Do Humans Check Your SEO?

If you just read the title of this blog and think it’s strange, you’re not alone. Most people believe Google relies entirely on an algorithm to determine where your website pages appear in search results. Have you ever wondered do humans check your SEO? You bet they do – or might.

There is an element of exaggeration in my “You bet” comment. However, the reality is that Google employs an army of people to manually check the quality of search results. They’re known as Google Search Quality Raters. They might check your website. Although it isn’t guaranteed and the chances are very low, there is always a possibility.

What do Search Quality Raters do?

Firstly, the people that Google employ don’t actually check your SEO. I could argue that they do. Their task is to assess how effective Google Search is in giving the user the type of result they think they’re looking for. In other words, their primary job is to see if your content offers value to Google users when it appears in results.

Google documentation for raters

If that sounds subjective, you’re in for a surprise. They have to adhere to a guidance document that is no less than 181 pages in length. What’s more, I have a copy of it that you can download.

Google Search Quality Raters Guidance Document

If you don’t fancy reading through 181 pages of rather boring (but impressively thorough) guidance, I’ll save you the job by summarising what they do.

I’ll refer to Search Quality Raters as SQR’s from hereon, for ease.

What does the document contain?

Google issue introductory guidance to SQR’s, telling them what their role is, but also giving them information about what the impact of their work will be. This guidance contains details that you should be aware of. If you’re sitting there thinking that an SQR could visit your website and destroy (or improve) your search engine rankings, don’t worry too much.

Can it impact my search rankings?

This is what Google say:

No single rating can directly impact how a particular webpage, website, or result appears in Google Search, nor can it cause specific webpages, websites, or results to move up or down on the search results page. Using ratings to position results on the search results page would not be feasible, as humans could never individually rate each page on the open web.

Instead, ratings are used to measure how effectively search engines are working to deliver helpful content to people around the world. Ratings are also used to improve search engines by providing examples of helpful and unhelpful results for different searches.

Is that statement about rankings misleading?

On the one hand, Google is telling you that your search rankings won’t change. However, if you read into it, that isn’t necessarily the case. If your content appears in search results and it doesn’t provide the “helpful content” that Google mentions, then it isn’t an effective result, is it? Hence, if Google were then to make any change to the results being shown, then there is direct impact on your rankings.

I still don’t think you should worry too much, especially if you consider how many webpages there are on the internet. If you Google it (ironically), you’ll find a mix of results stating that there are between 1-2 billion websites, with approximately 200-300 million considered ‘active’. That is websites though, let alone webpages!

What are the chances of a human rater visiting my website?

The chances of an SQR reviewing your content is low. Google employ over 12,000 SQR’s. If you do some very quick maths, you’ll discover that it barely compares to the vast number of websites online.

How do they rate websites and page?

Ultimately, their job is to give the pages they assess a PQ rating. PQ stands for Page Quality.

Google provides a lot of detail on some subjects that are widely discussed in the SEO world. One of those is YMYL.

Your Money or Your Life

YMYL is a topic I’ve covered previously in a blog, but it means Your Money or Your Life and categorises content that could “significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society.”

If you want to read about YMYL, you’ll find it on my blog about what type of content Google likes.

Interestingly, Google provide a table that helps SQR’s decide if content falls into the YMYL topic, shown below:

The reason I’ve shown this is because there is to demonstrate the lengths Google go to in educating their SQR’s. Google takes their PQ rating seriously and has to ensure their rating is given after adhering to strict criteria.

I often publish rather scathing or critical comments about Google. They’ve not made life easier for SEO professionals or website owners in the last 12 months. This is largely due to a swathe of updates. However, I think they’re doing their utmost to make sure that SQR’s have the information they need to make a reasoned decision.

Types of content they rate

The SQR needs to assess what Google call the MC and SC – Main Content and Supplementary Content. They even have to assess any advertising on the page. This includes paid for ads. They even tell their SQR’s that advertising can add value to the user experience, which it may well do if it sends them to something they’d been looking for.

Contact and helpful information pages

Interestingly, they are also instructed to specifically look for About Us, Contact, and Customer Service information.

If you run an e-commerce store, take note of one of the guidance areas Google gives SQR’s:

Look for contact information—including the store’s policies on payment, exchanges, and returns. Sometimes this information is listed under “customer service.”

Google wants the SQR to investigate if a store is showing the policies it should do (and classes it as customer service). When I first read that, I was surprised. It highlights the lengths Google goes to in assessing content. There will be a lot of stores that fall foul of that.

Meeting your legal obligations on your website

It never ceases to amaze me how many e-commerce sites don’t meet their statutory legal obligations. I see this regularly in the UK & EU. One example is when a registered company in the UK doesn’t show it’s Companies House number. Another is publishing a Privacy Policy.

Overall page ratings and sliders

SQR’s are required to give an Overall Page Rating. They do this with a slider control. The exact slider they use is shown below:

They give guidance on how you should rate the overall quality of a page. This covers everything from the title to the apparent trustworthiness of the page.

There is a strong emphasis on the page’s reputation, including reviews and sources of reputation indicators.

Google then dive into areas you’d expect, including E-E-A-T and YMYL considerations. They show a selection of tables to remind SQR’s of what to look for on both counts.

Low quality page ratings and guidance

However, I was surprised by how much guidance they provide on identifying “Low Quality Pages” and what to look for. It is refreshing to see Google ensure that their raters spend sufficient time assessing potentially low quality content. There are references to harmful, self-harm, spam and pages that attempt to manipulate search algorithms.

More than 30 pages are dedicated to low-quality content. Many contain wsuperb examples in the form of links (and they include sites that distribute incorrect or deliberately misleading news).

Medium quality pages

In a similar fashion, the document then covers “Medium Quality Pages”, shifting the scale and guidance on how to recognise what I’d best describe as distinctly average content.

The best way I can describe this is a section in the guidance that uses the phrase “Nothing wrong, nothing special”.

Finally, in respect of quality ratings, they show table after table of what a page needs to demonstrate to be awarded a “High Quality Rating”.

User locations and search intent

After completing the page quality rating section, the guidance covers everything from the user’s locale (where the searcher is in relation to the webpage) to content applicability and its importance.

A wonderful example of where to send a user

Google’s first example illustrates that content isn’t always suited to a single country due to language differences, even when the same language is used. The sport of football is their quite brilliant example. If someone in the USA searched for “football”, they’re probably looking for NFL/AFL American Football content, whereas else in the world they’d be wanting content related to what the American audience would know as “soccer”.

This is important because the SQR has to look at user intent. What is it they expect to see and does the page provide it?

Duplicate meaning and identification

There are other queries shown with examples that you’d probably not think of before reading this blog. Apple the computer company versus apple the fruit is one!

If you think about it for a while, there are thousands of references to words in company names. Chemical elements provide another example they highlight, as I’d never realised how many companies are named “Mercury.” Google points out that this clashes with both the planet and the chemical element.

Search intent and content that changes over time

The document then moves on to how search queries and what a user expects to see can change over time, and they use two former US presidents to demonstrate the difficulty in matching user searches to content.

Examples of searches that having changing target intent

George Bush and George Bush Jnr are the men in question, with Google then showing how the same problem exists with the generic “iPhone” search – with 17 years (at the time of writing) between the first iPhone launch and the current model.

They also provide examples of the types of questions and how they are phrased. Google seems to favour using former US presidents as subject matter for these examples, with Barack Obama being used to highlight that “how tall is Obama” and “Barack Obama height” are the same type of “Know” question.

The intent of searches gets a swathe of examples next. This means they try to teach the SQR to understand if content is befitting for a question that looks for a service, a fact, a specific website (or webpage) and more.

The search “Needs Met” scale and satisfaction

This combination of guidance brings the SQR to another area they need to rate – the “Needs Met” scale.

In a nutshell, it asks how well the content of a page meets the needs of the user that landed on it. There are 5 main areas (although there are half marks inbetween them) for this on a sliding scale as shown below:

The key to these is understanding what each mark means – and running from left to right they are Fails to Meet Needs, Slightly Meets Needs, Moderately Meets Needs, Highly Meets Needs and the top mark of Fully Meets Needs.

You’ve got to hand it to Google. They make their search raters work. The guidance given includes what the user would have to do in order to see the content. Does it appear immediately on the landing page, or will they have to hunt for it?

The volume of examples that Google provide is impressive. Pages upon pages of text, images, and links illustrate what constitutes a Fully Met page and a Moderately Met page, while also highlighting what tips a page from Moderately Met to Slightly Met!

Is this document of any real use to website owners and SEO professionals?

This matters. The reason is that the Google document provides anyone targeting a search audience with the precise type of content tweaks and advice that you could ever wish for. Even though this document is used by human raters, you should pay attention to how it outlines what Google is looking for to move you up the rankings.

Page Quality and Needs Met relationship

Explaining the relationship between Page Quality and Needs Met is the next chapter in the document. This section includes references to how to rate Porn, Foreign Language and Page Doesn’t Load results.

Beyond this point in the document, there is a large amount of content related to understanding the differences between searches where a user is looking for information to satisfy a need online and when their intent is to “Visit In Person”.

Search locale identification

The document even covers how to rate content when the search is typed in a language that isn’t the local language. This happens a lot with the English language in particular, but also where someone from overseas might be using a foreign language in their search. Is the content they receive to be in their native tongue or in the most helpful in respect of the way content has been rated? There is a myriad of elements for SQR’s to consider.

Google’s RaterHub

Then we come to how SQR’s perform this work. Google provide an Evaluation Platform (known as the Rater Hub). It is, as you’d expect, an online system and Google even give the link for it. Try it here, I did – and you’ll get the same message telling you that you’re Unauthorised once you attempt to use your Google account to sign in (I couldn’t resist it!).

Google don’t provide a huge amount of information on the Rater Hub, other than how to report issues and duplicate pages. I’d love to dive into it and try it out for myself, but I’ve concluded that the tasks faced by SQRs are far more intensive than I ever imagined. I think I’d get very bored, very quickly.

Can this help your website SEO?

Does any of this matter to your SEO? Obviously, yes it does. I’d recommend that everyone with an inch of interest in how they might improve their website SEO takes a look at the document.

Spot the SEO clues within the document

There is a vast amount of information in the guidance that gives you more than a few clues about how Google read content. There are hints about what they look for, not just with human raters. It is, in essence, a manual version of what their algorithm reads and ranks, using the human mind to account for things mathematical equations can’t.

If you work in SEO, don’t complain if you don’t read it

The geek in me loves documents like this. The SEO professional in me considers them invaluable insights. If you work in SEO and don’t an interest in things like this, then you deserve everything you don’t get. Business owners should be reading parts of it. If you scanned down to the bottom of this page without reading a lot of it, go back and do yourself a huge favour.

Google leaks SEO hints

I read a huge amount of criticism of Google from SEO consultants. I’ve been known to add to that myself at times, and I think some of it is merited. However, they don’t always hide everything. They have a habit of leaking snippets of incredibly valuable information out. It can point people in the right direction. This document is one of those.

Feedback

Have you enjoyed reading this blog and found it useful? Either way, I always try to respond to feedback and I like hearing from readers. It helps me hone the content I produce and, hopefully, publish more of what you want to read.

I don’t write my blogs for SEO purposes. However, I accept that producing good-quality content could be seen as doing exactly that. I write them because something has caught my eye or I think it’ll be of interest. Let me know if this blog was interesting to you.