I missed this one last week. Google has officially released it's internal search quality rating guidelines.
This is a document that is used by Googles army of international testers. These are people that randomly sample results from the Google search results, and see if they meet the quality guidelines. Or your site may be flagged for a manual review if something has tripped a filter or maybe generated complaints.
In the worst cases, failing to meet the search quality guidelines can see your site given a manual penalty to push it further down the rankings, or in extreme cases, removed altogether.
This document has long been coveted as the holy grail by the SEO community, and it has been leaked into the public domain a few times over the years. But this is the first time it has actually publicly released by Google themselves.
Here is a link to the Google blog that announces it, and you can also download the or open the guidelines from the below link. Be warned though, it's 8MB in size, so make sure you have a decent internet connection!
