Google has added some significant changes to 'Your Money, Your Life' guidelines and provides clarifications on substandard pages

The internet is a hub of every type of content, but we know that only a few contents are of good quality, and the rest is not essential and low quality based. Google always tries to enhance the quality of user experience, and in this regard, they have revised guidelines for search Quality rater. In addition, Google has also elaborated that for good YMYL content, E-A-T is the essential factor. Further, they explained that sometimes it happens that trustworthy sites also publish poor-quality content.

For those who don't know, YMYL, the abbreviation of your money or your life, represents a specific type of content. As the name suggests, YMYL content influences people to make decisions that can impact their lives or finances. This is why the content is crucial compared to others and must be of a higher standard.

In the Quality rater points, previously, YMYL content comprised shopping, Health, and fitness, news, current affairs, a variety of classes of people, finance, etc., but, in the latest update, Google has removed the types as mentioned earlier. The newest version defines YMYL by its ability to impact others' lives. Content representing a massive threat of harm can affect the community's wellness, safety, and welfare. Google explains that every individual who reads such content will be harmed by YMYL content, which could lead to terrorism or aggressiveness. The risk of the spread of misleading information also increases. Due to this reason, Google now mentions YMYL in four categories of harmful content: health/safety, society, insurance of financial assets, and others. Furthermore, Google says a page about harmless content, for instance, ‘the science behind space’, will not fall in the YMYL content category. As per Google reforms, the content must be able to cause damage or impact the welfare of people.

In addition, Google mentioned a table on the guidelines PDF page to highlight twelve differentiating the types of topics that Google considers to fall in YMYL with simple examples. Another critical update in Google's policy is that it revamps the illustration of substandard pages. Google elaborates that the level of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) required for the website reflects on the content itself and the page's purpose. So, the content that requires routine expertise would not need the page creators to provide their information because they can handle it without expertise easily. Moreover, Google explains a poor-quality page can also be found on academic or official websites. If the content is harmful, the quality rater must identify and assess that aspect when finding out the quality of that page. Besides this, Google will rate a website as bad quality even if the website is authoritative but has a significant risk of destruction.

It is helpful for those who want to learn YMYL and E-A-T. Content categories. Google clarified that everyday expertise would supplicate most of the content. However, E-A-T is essential when the content is classified as YMYL (it can cause damage to society by any means).


H/T: SERT / SEL.

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