Term
Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG)
Internal evaluation document Google uses to instruct external quality raters on how to assess search results — basis for the E-E-A-T concept and the source of many algorithm updates.
Quality Rater Guidelines — explained in more detail
The Search Quality Rater Guidelines are a publicly published PDF that Google distributes to several thousand external raters. These raters evaluate search results along two axes: Page Quality (PQ) and Needs Met. Their ratings do not feed directly into rankings — instead they serve as training and validation signals for algorithm updates.
The QRG are the source of concepts like E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) and the risk classification YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). SEO strategy should treat the QRG as a yardstick for content quality, not as a checklist of direct ranking signals.
Example / In practice
Before a core update, rater scores are scaled up: when raters classify a page as “Low Quality” (e.g. unclear authorship, thin content on a health topic), Google uses that data to train machine classifiers that algorithmically identify similar pages.
Distinction from similar terms
E-E-A-T is a sub-concept of the QRG, not a standalone ranking factor. Webmaster Guidelines address site owners and define allowed/forbidden practices — the QRG, by contrast, are the evaluation lens from Google’s side.
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