Google’s Updated Search Quality Rater Guidelines are designed to help raters evaluate the quality of search results. The guidelines are updated regularly in order to take into account changes in technology, user expectations, and other factors. The guidelines provide instructions on how to rate search results based on a variety of criteria, including relevancy, accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and trustworthiness. They also provide guidance on how to identify and report deceptive websites. The guidelines also include information on how to evaluate different types of search results, such as news and images. Finally, the guidelines provide advice on how to interpret and apply the information when evaluating search results.

Google updates these search rating guidelines periodically to reflect changes in user behavior, technology, and industry trends. The most recent update to the search rating guidelines occurred in May 2019.

Some of the key changes in the updated search rating guidelines include:

Emphasis on E-A-T: Google has placed a greater emphasis on expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in the updated guidelines, particularly for pages that are related to YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics such as health, finance, and legal advice.

Evaluation of mobile experiences: With more people accessing the internet on mobile devices than ever before, Google has added new evaluation criteria to the search rating guidelines to assess the mobile user experience.

Consideration of user intent: The updated guidelines emphasize the importance of understanding user intent behind a search query, and how search results can best fulfill that intent.

The updated search rating guidelines reflect Google’s ongoing efforts to provide high-quality, relevant search results to its users. By understanding these guidelines, website owners and SEO professionals can better optimize their sites to meet the needs of both search engines and users.