What Google's Quality Rater Guidelines Tell Us About User Experience

A new article on Search Engine Journal reports that Google's Quality Rater Guidelines are a mine of information just waiting to be dug up.



Quality Rater Guidelines can serve as a valuable resource for creating ranking content. You can also use them to upgrade your website UX. Back in May, Google made an announcement saying Core Web Vitals were to become a ranking signal. Core Web Vitals measure three distinct metrics:

• Loading (Largest Contentful Paint)
• Interactivity (First Input Delay)
• Visual Stability (Cumulative Layout Shift)

How do You Use the Quality Rater Guidelines?

Google already revealed some of the more technical ranking signals it uses - like mobile-responsiveness, HTTPS, and page speed. However, Core Web Vitals also measure vital aspects of UX. There's every reason to suspect UX will only grow as a ranking factor in the future, so here's some of the Quality Rater Guidelines that apply to that.

• Interstitials & Monetization with Ads - You don't need to get rid of ads completely, but you should think about how you include them.
• Setting Expectations & Clickbait - Avoiding clickbait is the safest bet when it comes to ranking.
  
  
  As Google says:
  
  

  "A result with a very misleading or exaggerated title should be rated Slightly Meets or lower, due to the poor user experience that occurs when the landing page does not match the expectation of the user when clicking or tapping on the result."

• Mobile Usability - users who visit on mobile want instant results, and they probably won't be prepared to wait for downloads.
  

While Google's Quality Rater Guidelines can be a mine of information, you'll need to invest the time and effort in digging up that knowledge before you can benefit. It's a long read - at 175 pages - but you can learn a great deal about what content works for users and how to make pages work for Googlebot too.

Core Web Vitals start to become an influencing factor on your ranking in 2021, so now is the time to begin reading and make some changes! There's far more detail in the original article, so I'd advise you to start there.