Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · Serving and ranking
Before a change to Search launches it is tested: in side-by-side experiments external search quality raters compare results with and without the change, then live traffic experiments start at about 0.1% of users and are judged on long lists of metrics, and only changes that benefit users become launches. In 2023 Google ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side and 16,871 live traffic experiments and made 4,781 launches, as its How Search Works page confirms; a second Day 3 slide gave rounded figures, including 800,000+ tests, which matches no published number. Raters follow the published Search Quality Rater Guidelines but cannot affect individual sites' rankings: their ratings measure how well Search works and become labels used to improve the algorithms. The guidelines define content quality by effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy and rate any deception, such as fake author personas with AI-generated headshots, as Lowest; Google synced its helpful-content and generative AI guidance with this material on 1 October 2026. Day 2 had already pointed to the rater guidelines as the detailed source on how Google thinks about a page's main content, and Google said on Day 3 that a core update is sometimes coupled with an update to the guidelines (not in Google's docs); Google's 2019 post says broad core updates are tested with rater feedback that is not used directly in ranking. Author’s view: with 4,781 launches in 2023 and only a handful of named updates, almost every change to Search goes unannounced. The opening keynote on Day 1 said even the classic ten blue links were settled only after millions of experiments (said at the event), and a second recording of Day 2 captured Gary Illyes defining main content as any part of a page that directly helps it achieve its purpose, the same definition the rater guidelines use.
Things in this topic 5
Counts are claims that name the thing. All things
What to do
Google said that even the classic ten-blue-links layout was settled only after millions of experiments, as part of using as much data as possible for product decisions.
Speaker Lino CattaruzziIn Day 1, 11:00 · Welcome and opening keynotesEvidence transcript
Gary Illyes defined a page's main content as any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose, what it was built for.
“Main content is any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose”
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 2, 11:30 · Understanding what's on a pageEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-HTM-01glossary term Main content (centerpiece)
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines define main content as any part of the page that directly helps it achieve its purpose, including text, images, videos, page features such as calculators and content created by users, and they count the title at the top of the page as part of it.
“Main Content is any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose.”
Publisher Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF, 11 September 2025)Annotates Day 2, 11:30 · Understanding what's on a page
Used byrequirement DEV-HTM-01glossary term Main content (centerpiece)
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines say navigation links are a common type of supplementary content, and that content behind tabs and user reviews or comments may count as main content on some pages and as supplementary content on others, depending on the page's purpose.
Publisher Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF, 11 September 2025)Annotates Day 2, 11:30 · Understanding what's on a page
Used byrequirement DEV-HTM-01
Google's slide said that in 2023 Google ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side experiments and 16,871 live traffic experiments, and made 4,781 launches to Search.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence 2 slide photos
Google's slide pointed to the Search Quality Rater Guidelines at goo.gle/raters-guidelines, with a QR code to the guidelines PDF, and the speaker said this is the exact document Google's raters use.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google's slide said search quality raters are independent reviewers who help Google decide whether a change it is about to launch is good for users.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence slide photo, transcript
Used byglossary term Search quality raters
Google's slide said search quality raters cannot affect the rankings of individual sites.
“They can not affect individual site's rankings.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence slide photo
Used byglossary term Search quality raters
Google's slide said Google gives its search quality raters guidelines that describe how Google thinks about quality.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence slide photo
The rater guidelines' table of contents shown on Google's slide covers page quality rating, YMYL topics, main and supplementary content, website and creator reputation, E-E-A-T and lowest quality pages.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence slide photo
Google's slide said that in 2023 Google ran more than 800,000 search quality tests; the speaker added that a more recent figure might exist.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google's slide said Google made more than 4,700 launches to Search in 2023; the speaker rounded this to close to 5,000.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google's quality talk defined content quality as the extent to which a human being put effort, originality, talent, skill and accuracy into creating the content.
“Quality is basically the extent to which a human being put effort, originality, talent, skill, and accuracy into creating content.”
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Content quality (effort, originality, talent or skill, accuracy)
Google's quality talk said that at any moment thousands of Search experiments are probably running.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said side-by-side experiments compare a proposed change with what is already in production; its hypothetical example was rewriting a page's title with AI and checking whether the result is better than the current one.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Side-by-side and live traffic experiments
Google's quality talk said experiments are judged on hundreds of metrics, and a change that does well enough is then run on very small slices of live traffic.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said only changes whose live traffic experiments look even better, or exceed expectations on the metrics, become launches.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said a change to Search cannot simply be launched: it must first be shown to move the metrics in a way that benefits users.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said search quality raters are external to Google, not Google employees.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Search quality raters
Google's quality talk said search quality raters can be employed by other search engines too, not just by Google.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said raters rate results and their ranking for a change, decide whether the change is good or bad, and explain why they chose their rating.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said rater ratings are used to measure how effectively search engines deliver helpful content to people around the world.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk stressed that nothing in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines is itself a ranking factor; the guidelines explain how Google thinks about quality.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript, slide photo
Used byglossary term Search quality raters
Google's quality talk pointed to page 21 of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines for its definition of content quality by effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy, noting that the document is updated from time to time.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said effort, in the rater guidelines, is the extent to which a human being actively worked to create satisfying content, and that effort can be direct or indirect.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said originality means offering content that is not available on any other website or, where similar content exists elsewhere, adding more value to it.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said talent or skill means content created with enough talent and skill to give users a satisfying experience.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said content has to be accurate, and that accuracy matters most for YMYL topics and health topics.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google says it constantly evaluates how Search is doing, including whether users like the results and whether they can accomplish what they want on Search.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google sometimes couples a core update with an update to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence transcript
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines tell raters that any form of deception makes a page untrustworthy and earns it the lowest rating.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Quality raters cannot give a site a penalty or a manual action; their ratings are converted into labels that Google uses to improve its algorithms.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-05
Publishing AI output without checking it can indirectly harm a site's standing in Search, because deceptive content rated lowest by raters feeds the labels used to improve the algorithms.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-05
Google sees fake online personas as a growing type of deception, for example a professional author bio whose headshot is an AI-generated image of a non-existent person, and pages doing this get the lowest rater rating.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-05
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines point out that the tool used to create content is not the problem, but how it was used and what for.
“it's not the tool that was used that is the problem, but rather how the tool was used and what for.”
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-05
Google's How Search Works page says a live traffic experiment first enables a feature for a small percentage of people, usually starting at 0.1%, and compares them with a control group on a very long list of metrics, such as clicks, number of queries, abandoned queries and time to click.
Publisher Google Search (How Search Works)Annotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Used byglossary term Side-by-side and live traffic experiments
Google's How Search Works page says that in a side-by-side experiment search quality raters see two sets of results, one with the proposed change and one without, and are asked which they prefer and why.
Publisher Google Search (How Search Works)Annotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Used byglossary term Side-by-side and live traffic experiments
Google's helpful-content guidance lists effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy as the main-content attributes search quality raters are trained to evaluate, and says using generative AI to produce large amounts of text without manual oversight or curation represents little to no effort.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-02glossary term Content quality (effort, originality, talent or skill, accuracy)
Google's page on how it tests Search says that in 2023 it ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side experiments and 16,871 live traffic experiments, and made 4,781 launches.
Publisher Google Search (How Search Works)Annotates Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updates
Google's 2019 post on core updates says Google tests any broad core update before it goes live, including feedback from its search quality raters, whose data is not used directly in ranking.
Publisher Search Central blog (1 August 2019)Annotates Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updates
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines (September 2025) list fake owner or content creator profiles, such as made-up author profiles with AI-generated images, as deception, and say pages using deception of any type should be rated Lowest.
Publisher Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF, 11 September 2025)Annotates Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-05
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines say no single rating can directly change how a page appears in Google Search; ratings measure how well search works and give examples of helpful and unhelpful results to improve it.
Publisher Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF, 11 September 2025)Annotates Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.
Google updated its generative AI content guidance on 1 October 2026 with information from the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, to keep its documentation in sync with the presentations used at its developer events.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.
Two Day 3 slides headed 'In 2023' gave Google's testing figures in two versions: exact in the quality talk (719,326 search quality tests, 4,781 launches) and rounded in the updates talk (800,000+ tests, 4,700+ launches). Google's How Search Works page states the exact 719,326 and 4,781, so cite those with the year 2023; 800,000+ matches no figure on that page, although the page's three test counts (719,326 quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side and 16,871 live traffic experiments) add up to 861,139.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Google made 4,781 launches to Search in 2023 while its status dashboard lists nine named ranking updates that year, so almost every change to Search goes unannounced; monitor rankings and traffic continuously, not only around announced core or spam updates.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Use the rater guidelines as a description of what Google's ranking systems aim to reward, not as a checklist of ranking factors: rater scores evaluate Google's changes and are not used to rank any particular site.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
The talk's originality test ('are you adding more value') matches Google's helpful-content question on content that draws on other sources, while the rater guidelines ask raters, where other websites have similar content, to consider whether the page is the original source; aim to be the original source, and add substantial value where you build on others.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
On 1 October 2026, during the event, Google updated its generative AI content guide with rater-guideline material to keep its documentation in sync with its developer-event presentations, and the helpful-content page, updated the same day, carries the effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy definitions from the quality talk; cite those pages rather than the talk.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Show only real authors with real photos and verifiable profiles; never invent author personas or use AI-generated headshots, which Google's raters treat as deception.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-05
Search results have moved from ten blue links to feature-rich, media-rich results because users wanted more.
Google said that even the classic ten-blue-links layout was settled only after millions of experiments, as part of using as much data as possible for product decisions.
Google's quality talk said that at any moment thousands of Search experiments are probably running.
Google said that even the classic ten-blue-links layout was settled only after millions of experiments, as part of using as much data as possible for product decisions.
Google's quality talk pointed to page 21 of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines for its definition of content quality by effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy, noting that the document is updated from time to time.
Gary Illyes pointed to Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines as the detailed source on how Google thinks about the main content of a page.
Google sometimes couples a core update with an update to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
Google's quality talk pointed to page 21 of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines for its definition of content quality by effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy, noting that the document is updated from time to time.
Quality raters cannot give a site a penalty or a manual action; their ratings are converted into labels that Google uses to improve its algorithms.
Google's slide said search quality raters cannot affect the rankings of individual sites.
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines point out that the tool used to create content is not the problem, but how it was used and what for.
Google's spam policies define scaled content abuse as generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, with little or no value to users, no matter how they are created, and list automated translating of scraped content among the examples.
Google's slide said Google made more than 4,700 launches to Search in 2023; the speaker rounded this to close to 5,000.
Google's slide said that in 2023 Google ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side experiments and 16,871 live traffic experiments, and made 4,781 launches to Search.
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines point out that the tool used to create content is not the problem, but how it was used and what for.
Google's quality talk said quality problems should be treated as quality issues, not as AI versus human content, because a lot of good AI-assisted or AI-written content exists.
Publish AI-generated text, images and markup only after human review, and show only real authors
Rests on 11 claims, 6 of them in this topic
Wrap each page's primary content in one clearly delimited main area
Rests on 14 claims, 3 of them in this topic
Do not generate large sets of low-value pages from templates, feeds or LLM output
Rests on 7 claims, 1 of them in this topic