GlossarySEO
What are Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines?
Also called: quality rater guidelines, QRG, SQRG, rater guidelines
Definition
The Search Quality Rater Guidelines are Google's public handbook for the human raters who evaluate search results. Raters' scores help Google measure its systems but don't directly change any page's ranking.
Search Quality Rater Guidelines, explained
Google employs external quality raters around the world to review search results for sample queries and rate how helpful and trustworthy they are. The guidelines are the long document that tells them how. Google publishes it openly and updates it periodically; the latest version we found when checking in September 2026 is dated September 11, 2025.
The most important thing to understand is what raters don't do. Google's overview states that no single rating can directly impact how a particular page or site appears in Google Search, or cause it to move up or down. Rater data is used to measure how well Google's systems work, like feedback cards in a restaurant, and to evaluate proposed changes.
So why read it? Because it's the clearest description of what Google means by quality. Concepts like E-E-A-T, "Your Money or Your Life" topics, page quality and "Needs Met" come from these guidelines. They describe what a high-quality page looks like, what makes a page untrustworthy, and why the same content standards differ for a recipe and for medical advice.
Useful sections for founders: how raters assess who is responsible for a site and its content, how they judge the main content against the page's purpose, and the examples of lowest-quality pages, including scaled, copied or deceptive ones. Reading those with your own site open is a sobering exercise.
Don't treat the guidelines as a checklist of ranking factors. They describe outcomes Google wants its systems to reach, not the signals those systems use.
Why it matters for founders
The guidelines are the closest thing to Google explaining, in plain examples, what quality means. Reading them helps you judge your pages the way Google's evaluators would.
Example
A fintech founder reads the section on "Your Money or Your Life" topics and realizes their tax guides have no author information or sources. They add both before scaling the section.
Common mistakes
- Believing raters can penalize or boost a specific site.
- Treating every concept in the document as a direct ranking factor.
- Citing an outdated version of the guidelines.
Sources
- Google: Search Quality Rater Guidelines (September 2025)
- Google: Search Quality Rater Guidelines, an overview
Checked
Related terms
- E-E-A-TE-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It's the framework Google's quality raters use to judge content. It isn't a single ranking factor, but Google's systems look for signals of it.
- Helpful contentHelpful content is Google's term for people-first content: made mainly to help readers rather than to attract search traffic. Since March 2024, Google evaluates helpfulness within its core ranking systems, not a separate update.
- Core updateA core update is a significant, broad change Google makes to its search ranking systems several times a year. It's not aimed at any specific site, and rankings can rise or fall as Google reassesses content.
- Author bylineAn author byline is the line that names who wrote a piece of content, usually linking to an author page or bio that explains their background and why they're qualified to write about the topic.