Developing
algorithmic changes to search involves a process of
experimentation. Part of that experimentation is having
evaluators—people who assess the quality of Google’s search results—give us
feedback on our experiments. Ratings from evaluators do not determine
individual site rankings, but are used help us understand our experiments. The
evaluators base their ratings on guidelines we give them; the guidelines
reflect what Google thinks search users want.
In 2013, we published our human rating guidelines to provide
transparency on how Google works and to help webmasters understand what Google
looks for in web pages. Since that time, a lot has changed: notably, more
people have smartphones than ever before and more searches are done on mobile
devices today than on computers.
We often make changes to the guidelines as our understanding of
what users wants evolves, but we haven’t shared an update publicly since then.
However, we recently completed a major revision of our rater guidelines to
adapt to this mobile world, recognizing that people use search differently when
they carry internet-connected devices with them all the time. You can find that
update here (PDF).
This is not the final version of our rater guidelines. The
guidelines will continue to evolve as search, and how people use it, changes.
We won’t be updating the public document with every change, but we will try to
publish big changes to the guidelines periodically.
We expect our phones and other devices to do a lot, and we want
Google to continue giving users the answers they're looking for—fast!
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