Google uses the term “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) to categorize topics or pages that could impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety if presented inaccurately.
The stakes are high for such content, which is why Google’s algorithms impose a higher standard on these pages.
It’s crucial to identify whether the subjects you cover fall under YMYL. When addressing YMYL topics, it’s important to understand what Google values in terms of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) within your specific industry.
This article will explore what type of content Google classifies as YMYL and how you can enhance E-A-T for those pages.
### What is YMYL?
Google introduced the acronym YMYL, “Your Money or Your Life,” in the June 2013 version of the search quality evaluator guidelines:
> “There are some pages for which PQ is particularly important. We call these pages Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages. They are pages that can have an impact on your current or future well being (physical, financial, safety, etc.). YMYL pages should come from reputable websites, and the content should be created with a high level of expertise and authority.”
>(Section 7.2 of the 2013 Google search quality evaluator guidelines)
PQ here means Page Quality.
Google created these guidelines to educate its team of search quality raters, who evaluate and provide feedback on search results and web pages. Although initially not publicly available, this document is now accessible to everyone.
Google instructs the raters that if a page is likely to significantly impact a user’s life, it needs to be of high quality, created with a high level of expertise and authority.
Google later reiterated the importance of good E-A-T for YMYL pages in official public documentation, such as their guide on how they fight disinformation:
> “We introduced the YMYL category in 2014. They include financial transaction or information pages, medical and legal information pages, as well as news articles, and public and/or official information pages that are important for having an informed citizenry.”
>(Excerpt from how Google fights disinformation)
and
> “For these “YMYL” pages, we assume that users expect us to operate with our strictest standards of trustworthiness and safety. As such, where our algorithms detect that a user’s query relates to a “YMYL” topic, we will give more weight in our ranking systems to factors like our understanding of the authoritativeness, expertise, or trustworthiness of the pages we present in response.”
>(Excerpt from how Google fights disinformation)
When Google’s algorithms detect that a query relates to a YMYL topic, more weight is given in their ranking systems to factors contributing to their E-A-T assessment.
E-A-T is very important.
Improving E-A-T will vary depending on your industry and the topics covered. Understanding what Google values in terms of E-A-T for your pages can help you focus your efforts on improving site quality.
### What is E-A-T?
E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is a concept that represents Google’s efforts to determine the authenticity of your business, your website, and its content. It’s not a single score or metric; instead, Google gathers information from across the web to approximate whether your website is credible enough to rank. If you write on YMYL topics, understanding Google’s assessment of E-A-T for your subjects is important.
Google’s documentation on what site owners should know about core updates advises that “assessing your own content in terms of E-A-T criteria may help align it conceptually with the different signals that [their] automated systems use to rank content.”
Whenever Google hints at something that could help improve rankings, it’s worth paying attention! So how do we understand what these “E-A-T criteria” are? Google recommends reading the search quality rater guidelines (QRG) for guidance.
> “If you understand how raters learn to assess good content, that might help you improve your own content. In turn, you might perhaps do better in Search. In particular, raters are trained to understand if content has what we call strong E-A-T. Reading the guidelines may help you assess how your content is doing from an E-A-T perspective and improvements to consider.”
>(Excerpt from Google’s search quality rater guidelines)
The guidelines cover many aspects of E-A-T that can be evaluated. Although we don’t know to what extent Google’s algorithms try to replicate what’s in the QRG, Google’s Ben Gomes stated in a CNBC article,
> “You can view the rater guidelines as where we want the search algorithm to go…They don’t tell you how the algorithm is ranking results, but they fundamentally show what the algorithm should do.”
>(Ben Gomes, Google vice president of search engineering, in 2017)
Understanding E-A-T like a quality rater can sometimes give us an edge in search. Knowing what Google values allows you to improve your pages’ quality.
### How can you improve E-A-T?
Initially, many people focused strongly on adding expert authors and building out author bios and profiles.
While this can improve E-A-T and user trust, it may not be necessary for all content types. Author bios can be beneficial for users by demonstrating the expertise or authority of the content creator.
The E-A-T of the content creator matters most.
Working on brand recognition and reputation in ways that search engines can detect is key to improving your E-A-T.
You can also improve E-A-T by better answering questions posed in Google’s blog post on core updates, Amit Singhal’s Panda Questions, or Stanford’s guidelines for web credibility.
Earning links or mentions from authoritative sites in your field is vital for improving E-A-T. Links are closely connected to PageRank, Trust, and Authoritativeness.
Even unlinked mentions may help Google gather information about your entities, enhancing their understanding of your business.
In some cases, adding references to authoritative resources can improve the trustworthiness of your content. For other sites, an E-A-T strategy may start with adding schema to help Google understand the entities within your content better.
There’s a lot you can do to enhance E-A-T.
### Using QRG Examples to Focus Your E-A-T Efforts
Each example in the QRG is labeled as YMYL or not. For instance, recipe pages are not called YMYL. Product pages are, but pages advising on choosing a product may not be.
By reading through the examples in the QRG, determine whether your pages are considered YMYL. If so, pay close attention to E-A-T.
Even if your content isn’t YMYL, E-A-T still matters, albeit differently. While a medical site gains E-A-T through expert authors, a humor or recipe site might benefit more from popularity, user engagement, and reviews.
For e-commerce sites, generating helpful reviews might be more crucial than adding expert authors.
### Reviewing Top-Ranked Pages Like a Quality Rater
Reviewing top-ranking pages helps understand the E-A-T expectations Google might have. For instance, a medical query like “using ginger for your health” will favor pages authored by recognized medical experts.
If your business isn’t widely recognized, listing author qualifications might be necessary to rank for YMYL topics. For e-commerce, the focus might be more on robust product pages and good customer reviews.
Understanding the QRG guidelines helps prioritize your E-A-T improvement efforts.
### Examples of E-A-T-Related Improvements
To improve E-A-T, ask:
– Can we build enough authority and recognition to rank for this keyword?
– Can we improve user trust with clearer contact and refund information?
– Do we have authors with appropriate expertise for this content?
– Is the content up to date with authoritative references?
– Is Google connecting good mentions of our brand?
And so on.
### Summary
Google aims to rank the most authoritative and helpful content for YMYL queries. Understanding the landscape and how Google’s quality raters assess content can provide clues on where to focus efforts to improve E-A-T.
