What is YMYL, and does it matter to SEOS? In this episode, Dr. Marie Haynes discusses how Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines and other documentation describe the term YMYL. She shares example websites discussed in the QRG and why they should or should not be considered YMYL. While the QRG do not replicate Google’s algorithms, they show us what Google is trying to accomplish. We believe there is a lot to be learned that can be used to our advantage in understanding how Google’s algorithms treat sites differently depending on whether or not their content contains YMYL information. And even if you are a non-YMYL site like a recipe site, there is much to discover here about how Google could be valuing EAT in your niche.

Also in this episode:

- SERP turbulence Jan 11-12 and 14-16, 2022 - Could it be related to knowledge graph changes?

- The page experience update is coming to desktop in February

- Several sites are seeing large spikes in Google crawling

This episode corresponds with newsletter episode 218:

https://www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-218-light-version/

Google’s blog post on core updates

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/08/core-updates.html

Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (Quality Rater Guidelines)

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf

Our book on how we analyze sites in the eyes of the QRG - Still valuable even though it’s the 2020 version

https://www.mariehaynes.com/product/quality-raters-guidelines/

Google’s blog post on core updates

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/08/core-updates.html

Past podcast episodes

https://www.mariehaynes.com/seo-newsletter/seo-podcast/

Information on having the MHC team review your site in the eyes of Google’s blog post on core updates

https://www.mariehaynes.com/services/site-quality-assessments/

Contact MHC

https://www.mariehaynes.com/contact/

Book on Unnatural Links and Manual Action Removal

https://www.mariehaynes.com/product/unnatural-links-book/

Submit a question for the next Q&A: https://Mariehaynes.com/qa-with-mhc/

Subscribe to the newsletter: https://Mariehaynes.com/newsletter

Twitter: @Marie_Haynes - https://Twitter.com/Marie_Haynes