Breaking down Google’s quality results updates — and the changes you should make
A lot of commonly accepted wisdom on how Google assesses websites is based on unofficial rumours and guesswork — so the last few weeks have been a huge anomaly.
Usually secretive about its internal processes, Google published a series of posts explaining — in more detail than ever before — how it judges quality in search results and how it ensures the results displayed meet these standards.
In this article I’ll summarise the key takeaways from each of Google’s recent posts, and more importantly, some actionable changes that you can make to your content to better meet Google’s quality criteria.
Why has Google suddenly published so much information about how it assesses quality?
As Google itself has noted, 2020 has been a year “when access to reliable information is more critical than ever — from COVID-19 to natural disasters to important moments of civic participation around the world”.
The search engine has published three articles relating to quality as part of its ongoing ‘How Search Works’ series, which had previously only been updated every couple of months. These covered ‘How Google delivers reliable info in Search’, how it prevents spam results from appearing, and a case study of how Google’s systems interpreted a live query and altered the SERP in real time.
There was also a post outlining Google’s recent investments into “information quality” for search and news results.
COVID-19 has completely changed search behaviour in many industries, throwing off normal search volumes and giving rise to many new queries that Google has never seen before. The aforementioned case study looks at how Google realised a sudden surge in searches for “Why is the sky orange?” in California was due to wildfires happening in real time.
They reacted immediately to change the SERP from explaining why sunsets turn the sky orange to display live coverage from Californian news sites for users in that region (the SERP for people outside California remained the same).
The sheer amount of momentous breaking news stories — and ridiculous conspiracy theories — that we’ve had so far in 2020 means Google’s focus on quality information is prescient and may explain why it’s chosen to share this information now. Google is the primary source of information for millions of people around the world, so it will hope being transparent about some of its quality processes will increase users’ confidence in the information they’re shown.
What does Google mean by quality?
As much as they have advanced over the years, Google’s algorithms are still fallible. Google acknowledges that “We often can’t tell from the words or images alone if something is exaggerated, incorrect, low-quality or otherwise unhelpful.”
Given that, Google’s definition of quality can’t be completely precise. Instead, it describes quality results as being reliable, relevant and useful. It still has to rely in part on signals such as high-quality backlinks, click-through rate and bounce rate, to determine if content genuinely meets this criteria. Google will also often refer to a website’s ‘E-A-T factors’ — standing for ‘Expertise, Authority, Trust’, this is another way it defines ‘quality’ results.
However, outside its algorithms, Google employs an army of humans to ensure these quality signals are working effectively. Some 10,000 staff known as Search Quality Raters run millions of test searches between them each year and give feedback on the quality of the results returned.
Are the quality rules stricter for some keywords?
It’s well-known that there are some industries where Google places even greater importance on the quality of the results displayed. These are referred to colloquially as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) queries — where the information provided by a search result may directly and significantly influence the searcher’s life, for example by providing medical or financial advice. In these circumstances the quality of information provided is critical as incorrect information could have a significant negative impact on Google’s users.
Google cites the topics falling into this area as health, finance, civic information and crisis situations. Of course, COVID-19 has hit all of these, with the quality of medical advice results especially important.
As a result, COVID has probably forced Google to refine its quality detection and emphasis on E-A-T factors even further. New York-based SEO Lily Ray, an expert on E-A-T factors, even dubbed one recent algorithm update the ‘Wear a Mask’ update because it seemed to a direct response to COVID.
Finally, there are some keywords where the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in the assessment of its quality. If guidance on treating a medical condition or accessing financial support suddenly changes, outdated content will be relegated down the SERP in favour of new content that is more accurate.
What steps is Google taking to ensure quality results?
In one of its articles, Google gives examples of collaborations it has established with official sources (including government agencies and health organizations) to ensure YMYL queries have factual answers, such as on SERPs relating to claiming unemployment benefits.
It also says it’s asked medical professionals to check over the knowledge panels (parts of a SERP that are hand-picked by Google, rather than regular web results) displayed for keywords relating to health conditions.
More controversially, Google also appears to include Wikipedia within these official sources. You may have noticed that content from Wikipedia shows up prolifically in knowledge panels, especially for search results relating to people. That’s no accident — Google says it believes in Wikipedia’s “robust systems [which] guard for neutrality and accuracy”.
Google claims its own systems detect “99 percent” of Wikipedia vandalism before it could be pulled through to a knowledge panel, and that “most vandalism on Wikipedia is reversed within a matter of minutes”. But although Wikipedia has become more secure, its content is still fundamentally written by laypeople, vandals among them, and so Google’s reliance on it seems problematic given the other steps it has taken to stop misinformation spreading during breaking events. For breaking news, even Wikipedia vandalism that’s only up for a few minutes could still spread misinformation to a significant number of users.
Google remains coy on the tactics it uses to fight spam results, saying to reveal too much would help spammers beat the system, but it says it will hand out ranking penalties called manual actions “when one of our human spam reviewers finds [content] that is not complying with our Webmaster Guidelines”.
In order to ensure the SERP adapts to breaking news stories as in the California wildfires case, Google has founded an Intelligence Desk manned by analysts around the world who are tasked with keeping the search results updated as a story develops. Google recognises breaking news stories are particularly susceptible to fake news or misleading content as “people’s need for information can accelerate faster than facts can materialize […] the freshest information published to the web isn’t always the most accurate or trustworthy”.
With that in mind, it has also introduced “fact checks” which appear under search, news and image results for big stories, demonstrated below. These are sourced from news publishers who have marked up a fact check with ‘ClaimReview’ schema.
Google has also made changes to autocomplete to hide suggestions for queries it thinks are likely to return biased or unreliable information. As an example, it says it will remove autosuggests for queries that seem to be biased in favour of or against either of the US presidential election candidates (I quickly tested this by trying to generate autocomplete suggestions for ‘Trump is a…’ and ‘Biden is a…’ and sure enough, no suggestions came up — though phrasing it as ‘is Trump/Biden a…’ still brought up a couple of suggestions, so maybe this is a work in progress).
What changes should you make to improve the quality of your content?
So, it’s clear that Google is putting huge emphasis on the quality of results. It’s also clear that website owners need to adapt their content — especially sites who focus on YMYL topics. But what can you do?
Fortunately, there are a number of fairly simple changes you can make to help demonstrate your website’s reputability. I’ll break these down into three areas:
- Demonstrating accountability
Google appears to be increasingly keen on websites making themselves accountable for the content they’re publishing. Their thinking seems to be that if the information you’re publishing is accurate, you should be comfortable putting your name to it, and that it needs to be clear a website is run by real, contactable people.
Make sure your site has a detailed ‘About Us’ page, explaining your company’s mission and background. If you’ve been in business for decades, shout about it — this helps demonstrate your expertise in the industry.
Similarly, make it easy for customers to contact you. Have your contact information easily findable on-site, for example by linking to your contact page in the header or footer. Sites with no visible contact info are likely to be a red flag to Google when it comes to assessing trustworthiness.
If your site has a blog or news section, it’s a very good idea to have author bios for each post — not just specifying who wrote the post, but explaining their expertise in the field. If the person writing the post has 20 years’ experience in their industry and is considered an expert, you need to make that clear to Google. You can either include these bios at the bottom of the post or create a page for each author which is linked to from their byline.
WebMD does a great job of explaining their contributors’ expertise if you need inspiration.
2. Demonstrating reputability
Though Google is arguably more cautious about using backlinks to assess a site’s reputation than in the past, they still go a long way towards demonstrating a site’s reputability. A site that is linked to by relevant, respected sites in its niche will look like a trusted source for that topic. Build relationships with the high-quality sites in your niche, and put your content in front of the right people — for example by interacting with them on social, or sending out a newsletter to other sites in your industry — to help you build relevant links naturally.
Linking goes both ways, too. While there’s clearly more value in receiving backlinks than giving them, referencing claims or facts in your content by linking out to your source will also demonstrate your reputability. Though not all sites need to meet journalistic standards for citing their sources, this shows you’ve done your research, and the association with reputable sites from linking out to them can rub off positively on your site.
3. See keywords as Google does
A bit of a cryptic heading, granted, but I mean try and understand how Google is going to interpret that keyword. Further up I mentioned that, for certain keywords, ‘quality’ content means fresh content. If you have a keyword where the answer changes often — for example, “Which UK bank has the best interest rate?” — you need to make sure you’re continually updating your page with the latest information if you want to continue ranking well.
This principle also applies to the changes Google has made to autosuggest. If your keyword strategy includes keywords that express an opinion, you might see a drop in search volume (and therefore in traffic) if Google is no longer displaying that keyword as a suggestion, and you may be better off targeting a variation of the keyword. If you notice one of your keywords dropping in popularity (for example through Google Trends), consider whether this might be the reason.
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In summary
It’s important to note E-A-T factors aren’t direct ranking factors — they help Google assess the quality of a site’s content. This can be frustrating, because if you implement the changes I’ve mentioned you’ll want to see immediate results to show for them, but it’s unlikely to be that dramatic.
However, as Google’s understanding of quality continues to develop, these changes are likely to give you the edge over your competition and help you land SERP features such as featured snippets or People Also Ask boxes where Google looks to reward trustworthy content. At the very least, we’ll all become experts in quality assurance for our content…
We’ve recently launched the Twinkl Hive SEO Service which provides SEO coaching, strategy creation, keyword research, content creation and much more. For more information, get in touch at hive@twinkl.co.uk.
