For the first time, Google has released the full version of its Quality Raters Guidelines and Handbook. Google provides the 160 page .pdf to its human testers, who perform searches and rate the results based on these guidelines. Google then uses this rating information to enhance its algorithm in an attempt to continuously improve results for searchers.
Raters assign a Page Quality rating based on a sliding rating scale. The scale contains five primary rating options: Lowest, Low,...
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Google's algorithm uses a myriad of factors to determine what content to show users in search results. The algorithm is tweaked constantly in an effort to provide results that answer a searcher's question in the best possible manner.
However powerful Google's algorithm may be, it is not 100 percent responsible for evaluating the quality of pages and sites. Google employs human raters, known as its search quality team, to manually evaluate pages and assign page quality (PQ) rankings from...
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