Came across this while perusing Search Engine Land.
A current version of Googles super secret quality rating guide has appeared in the public domain, albeit on a pay for access site, and no doubt it will soon disappear.
But a respected marketeer has analysed it and summarised it's content and tells us web site owners exactly what we should or shouldn't be doing!
For those that are unaware, Google uses an army of 3rd party people around the world to laboriously monitor search results and look at websites, grading them appropriately. All these people have to conform to the latest set of internal Google guidelines, and it's not often us common folk get a chance to see what Google is really looking for.
A quick summary shows Google now looks for websites to have E-A-T, a great acronym for:
expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness
In other words if you lack E-A-T you can get marked down.
Other stuff is less surprising, lots of adverts above the page fold, poor page or website design, thin affiliate sites etc.
But an interesting one was a lack of "about us or contact info", so if you don't have an about us page, maybe it's time to get one!
The full article is here and worth a look.
Google Rewrites Quality Rating Guide
Let me know what anyone thinks, any surprises, worries, will you make any changes, or not bothered at all?
