What does Google want?

The official line is that Google’s goal is to provide its users with the most relevant, high-quality, and useful information in response to their search queries. To achieve this, Google continuously updates and refines its ranking algorithms to better understand the intent behind search queries and match them with the most relevant and authoritative websites.

When asked about America, the movie director Oliver Stone famously replied:

“We care about money and power and that’s it.”

Oliver Stone

This applies to American corporations and it definitely applies to Google. Above all else, Google wants money, power and dominance of the market. The vast majority of their revenue comes through search advertising, so Google’s search engine remains their number one asset.

Monetisation

Google is the master of monetisation and a large part of monetising a website is to ensure people stay on the website. Social media depends on this and the art of manipulation was first pioneered by Facebook. The Facebook ‘Like’ button introduced in 2009 was designed to mimic slot machines in its addictiveness.

One of Facebook’s founders, Sean Parker, said publicly they set out to consume as much of the user’s time as possible. He admitted it was:

“Exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

“The inventors”, he said, “understood this consciously and we did it anyway.”

Sean Parker

Reed Hastings, the cofounder of Netflix, which turns over an annual profit of $30 billion, stated:

“There are only a certain amount of hours which humans can tend to activities, and Netflix’s goal is to occupy those moments.”

Making it clear how much of our attention Netflix wants to occupy, he later said, “We are competing with people’s sleep.”

Reed Hastings – Netfilx

Google Search Features

Google started out as a search engine designed to navigate the Web, but the creators came to realise they make more money by users staying on the platform. Since then, they have increasingly reduced the amount of space available for organic search results. They achieved this by adding multiple ‘search features’.

2006

The process started in 2006 with the introduction of Google Flights, which displayed flight times directly on the search results page. This meant that users didn’t have to visit an airline’s website, because they could select dates and times directly on Google. Despite this annoying travel agents, it was mostly met with a positive reaction, which emboldened them to add more features to keep users on the platform.

2012

In 2012, they introduced the Knowledge Panel. This took information about famous people or businesses from websites such as Wikipedia and placed it prominently on the search results page. This meant that users didn’t need to visit Wikipedia, because the basic information they wanted was displayed directly on Google. Wikipedia, being a non-profit organisation, didn’t cause too much of a stir, but Google’s next move didn’t go unnoticed.

2014

In 2014, Google introduced a section called ‘Featured Snippets’. This section takes snippets of content from websites and displays it word for word on the search result pages. Website publishers across the world complained, because displaying content directly on Google meant there was no need for users to visit their website. This had a massive impact on website traffic and a study in 2020 highlighted how two-thirds of Google searches now end without users clicking through to a website.

2015

In 2015, Google added the People Also Ask section, which is a little more discreet, but still takes content from other websites and displays it in the form of answers to common questions.

2017

This process of taking content from websites and effectively stealing their traffic is a continuing trend and in 2017 they introduced Google Jobs. This feature displays job listings directly on search pages, then later, they added Google Hotels which works in a similar fashion.

This attempt at hoarding traffic is to keep users on Google for as long as possible. As long as users stay on the platform, then the chances of clicking an advert increases.

It’s a similar strategy to casinos in Las Vegas. They know that as long as you keep playing, eventually they’ll take your money.

Google will say they introduce these features to benefit their users. SEOs on the other hand argue that monopolising search results only benefits Google, because it limits the amount of choice available.

For example, if a user searches for ‘rugs’, they previously had a choice of the top ten Google recommended rug websites. Now, however, the entire ‘above the fold’ of the page is adverts, followed by one to three organic results. This is followed by a Google Business section along with a ‘News’ section and other search features. After this at the bottom of the page, we see a few more organic results followed by another section of adverts.

Organic search results are generally more trusted because it takes a lot to rank a website organically. Anyone can pay for advertising. But, finding the most trusted results among a medley of adverts and search features is proving more difficult than ever.

Google treads a fine line between maximising the money they make and alienating their user base. There are periodic outcries in the web community, such as in 2020 when Google changed the design of their Pay Per Click section, making it difficult to distinguish adverts from natural listings.

Even staunch proponents of Google such as SEOmoz founder, Rand Fishkin had to admit that Google had gone too far.

There has always been two types of people in the SEO industry. There are people like Rand Fishkin who sell SEO products and repeat the company line Google feed to the SEO community. Then there are professional SEOs whose job it is to figure out how Google actually works.

What actually works and what Google says are often very different things. True SEOs know that Google is a master at misinformation and all they are concerned about is making as much money as possible.

In 2018, after he sold SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin spoke at Brighton SEO and admitted he had been wrong all these years. Google was indeed only concerned about making money and that trumped the usability of their search engine.

But, it isn’t all doom and gloom for SEO. Despite Google’s best efforts to maximise profit, they know their search engine needs to remain the best on the market. If their competitors start producing better results, then users may decide to switch and all that advertising would go with them.

Search Result Quality Evaluators

When Google first launched, they created guidelines and employed human evaluators to assess the quality of their search results. An evaluator’s job was to rate the quality of results in accordance with the guidelines and see if they aligned. Rumours of this document leaked as early as 2003 and in 2005, the guidelines themselves were published on a website called SearchBistro and later dissected by famed SEO, Aaron Wall.

In this document there were tips on how to rate web pages for quality.

Search classifications

They identified three main search classifications which are still in use today:

• Navigational (example: a search for United Airlines)
• Informational (example: how do I..)
• Transactional (example: buy 18K White Gold Omega Watch)

Ratings

They then provided rating classifications. Quality raters were provided random search results and asked to classify pages using the following ratings:

Vital

Most queries, especially generic type queries do not have a Vital result.
Vital result example: search for Ask Jeeves returns www.ask.com.

Useful

These should have some of the following characteristics (although it likely will not exhibit all of them): comprehensive, quality, answers the search query with precision, timely, authoritative.

This is the highest rating attainable for most pages on most search queries.
Useful result example: search for ‘USA Patriot Act’ returning the ACLU page covering the USA Patriot Act.

For some plural queries, such as Newspapers in Scotland, the best results may be lists of related sites. Reviewers must also check some links on the page to ensure the page is functional.

Relevant

One step down from Useful. Relevant results may satisfy only one important facet of a query, whereas Useful results are expected to be more broad and thorough.

Results that would have been Vital if a more common interpretation did not overshadow it are considered relevant.

Not Relevant

Not Relevant results are related to the topic but do not help users.
If a person searching for Real Estate finds a San Diego Real Estate website that would probably not be relevant since most people searching for that do not live in or want to move specifically to San Diego.

As the San Diego example is too narrow geographically other sites could also be too narrow in other non location based ways, such as being outdated or too specific to a subset idea of the query.

Off Topic

Is not a useful page. Irrelevant.
Usually occurs when text matching algorithms do not account for some terms that can have multiple meanings.

Offensive

For example spyware, unrequested porn, AdSense scraper and other keyword net type sites, etc.

Google would take this human assessed data and update their algorithm with the aim of displaying only the best results. This information was a goldmine for SEO, because for the first time, we could see exactly how Google assessed the pages it wanted to rank. Later, in 2007, a revised document was leaked and another in 2011. Due to this, Google were forced to officially release the quality rater guidelines in 2013 and now publish updated versions on their own website.

Similar to the algorithm itself, the ‘Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines’ has grown extensively over the years and as of 2022 contains 172 pages of directives. These guidelines are essential for understanding how Google views web pages and how we should assess our own pages for SEO.
There is more to a website than just a single page, however. Google wants to know that the website itself and the creators can be trusted. They look at the entire entity and the most important metrics can be broken down into the following:

Usefulness and relevance

Firstly, search results need to be useful and relevant to a user’s search. This means Google is looking for web pages that closely match the keyword a user searches. However, they are also looking at the purpose of the page and whether it has been created for users, or for SEO.

Websites and pages should be created to help people. If that is not the case, a rating of Lowest may be warranted.

Common helpful or beneficial page purposes include (but are not limited to):

• To share information about a topic.
• To share personal or social information.
• To share pictures, videos, or other forms of media.
• To express an opinion or point of view.
• To entertain.
• To sell products or services.
• To allow users to post questions for other users to answer.
• To allow users to share files or to download software.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

The helpfulness of a page can also be determined by how much content there is. Google is specifically looking for a ‘Satisfying Amount of High Quality Main Content’. A ‘satisfying amount’ will depend on the search term itself. In the guidelines they cite Wikipedia as an example and their page matching the search term ’Siberian Husky’. This page contains 3,600 words and covers just about everything you need to know about the Siberian Husky. It is the type of page that Google wants to display high in the results.

For transactional search queries, where a user is shopping for a product or service, Google provides an example of an e-commerce page selling food mixers:

This shopping page on a reputable shopping website has a satisfying amount of high quality main content. The page provides the manufacturer’s product specs, as well as original product information, over 90 user reviews, shipping and returns information, multiple images of the product, etc. Note: Some of the main content is behind links on the page (“item details,” “item specifications,” “guest reviews,” etc.). Even though you have to click these links to see the content, it is still considered main content.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

This shows that as well as the page being relevant to a search term, it also needs to contain as much information as possible to satisfy the user. For a simple ecommerce product page, this means:

• Product description
• Manufacturer specifications
• Customer reviews
• Shipping and returns information
• Multiple images

Selecting this type of criteria for ranking a web page ensures that Google displays high quality results to the user. No other search engine has gone this deep into the kind of results it displays, which is why Google is so far ahead of the competition.
It doesn’t stop there, however.

Authority

A high quality web page may perfectly match a search term and fit all the required criteria, but Google looks for how much authority the website itself has. This isn’t explicitly stated in the Evaluators Guidelines, but I’ve seen enough evidence of websites with the most content ranking highest in the results.

You can think of Google as being like a librarian. If you ask a librarian to recommend a book on Siberian Huskies, they would look up a list of possibly hundreds of books that reference Siberian Huskies. Some will be books on dogs which contain sections on Huskies and others will be whole books dedicated to the Siberian Husky. Which books do you think they will recommend?

It is the same with Google. The algorithm will take into account how many pages there are on the website related to the search term and not just how relevant a single page is. The more pages a website has on a subject, the more authority it has to discuss individual aspects of that subject. However, there is more to authority than just volume of content.

You must also look for reputation information about the website. What do outside, independent sources say about the website? When there is disagreement between what the website says about itself and what reputable independent sources say about the website, trust the independent sources.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

This means that to have authority on a subject, not only does your website require a large volume of content, but also it needs to be verified by outside, independent sources. An evaluator is requested to conduct a search for the reputation of the author/website.

Use reputation research to find out what real users, as well as experts, think about a website. Look for reviews, references, recommendations by experts, news articles, and other credible information created/written by individuals about the website.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

A librarian is likely to recommend the most popular books on a subject, especially if they are written by recognised experts. It’s the same with Google. They will look online to see how popular your website is and how many links and mentions it has around the Web.

Trust

Another important factor Google wants to establish before it recommends your web page is trust.

• Who is Responsible for the Website and Who Created the Content on the Page.Every page belongs to a website, and it should be clear:
• Who (what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website.
• Who (what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) created the content on the page you are evaluating.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

When I started SEO, most content was created by people who were hidden. Since then it has become more important to have transparency and clearly show who the creators are. The E-A-T (Expertise, Authority & Trust) algorithm rolled out officially in 2015 and established clear guidelines on what Google wants. Further to this, in 2018 the ‘Medic’ update placed more stringent rules on what it considered ‘Your Money or Your Life’ pages.

Some types of pages or topics could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. We call such pages “Your Money or Your Life” pages, or YMYL. The following are examples of YMYL topics:

News and current events: news about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science, technology, etc. Keep in mind that not all news articles are necessarily considered YMYL (e.g., sports, entertainment, and everyday lifestyle topics are generally not YMYL). Please use your judgment and knowledge of your locale.

Civics, government, and law: information important to maintaining an informed citizenry, such as information about voting, government agencies, public institutions, social services, and legal issues (e.g., divorce, child custody, adoption, creating a will, etc.).

Finance: financial advice or information regarding investments, taxes, retirement planning, loans, banking, or insurance, particularly webpages that allow people to make purchases or transfer money online.

Shopping: information about or services related to research or purchase of goods/services, particularly webpages that allow people to make purchases online.
Health and safety: advice or information about medical issues, drugs, hospitals, emergency preparedness, how dangerous an activity is, etc.

Groups of people: information about or claims related to groups of people, including but not limited to those grouped on the basis of age, caste, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, immigration status, nationality, race, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, veteran status, victims of a major violent event and their kin, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalisation.

Other: there are many other topics related to big decisions or important aspects of people’s lives which thus may be considered YMYL, such as fitness and nutrition, housing information, choosing a college, finding a job, etc.

Please use your judgement.
We have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

Later, in December 2023, Google updated the E-A-T section to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust). The newly added “Experience” refers to the first-hand knowledge or practical involvement that the creator has with the topic they are discussing. It focuses on the value of personal experience in contributing to the quality and trustworthiness of the content.

This all means that trust and transparency are huge factors when it comes to ranking websites. All claims need to be backed by credible, verifiable sources and all content needs to be written by (or at least accredited to) credible, verifiable authors.

The website itself needs to be transparent and contain information about the company along with full contact details, genuine reviews and testimonials. Adding all this information ensures your website is trustworthy and Google will be more likely to recommend it within search results.

User experience

Finally, and this is something that hasn’t been leaked by Google, but is evident among most SEOs, is user experience. Google is a knowledge powerhouse and they have multiple means to gather data on human behaviour. Google Analytics tracking code can be added voluntarily to any website. The information gained from this is vital for website owners to see how users are engaging with their content. There are at least 28 million websites using Google Analytics, and it tracks everything from page visits, time spent on page, session duration and more. Google freely admits it uses this data to improve its services:

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps.

Google

Google also tracks the behaviour of users signed into Google accounts, which amounts to around 1.8 billion people. With all this data on user behaviour, Google is more than capable of assessing whether a website provides a good user experience or not.

For example, if a user types a query into Google, clicks a result, then quickly returns to another result, it can be assumed they didn’t find what they were looking for. If they click a result and spend 20 minutes browsing a website, then Google can assume they found what they were looking for. This information can easily be fed into the search algorithm to ensure that websites with poor user experience are shown lower in the results.

This means that building a website that provides a good user experience will get rewarded in the search results. This is something that all brands should pay attention to regardless of Google, because providing a good experience for customers is liable to generate more sales.

Taking all this into account, if we want our website to appear at the top of a Google search results page, we are going to need to supply the following:

• A highly relevant page
• A satisfactory amount of content
• A large number of related pages
• External, independent recommendations
• Transparency on who the creators are
• A credible reputation of the creators
• A good overall experience for the user.

Google has enjoyed so much success because they have gone far beyond other search engines in terms of their quality assessment. They go to these extraordinary lengths because they know that as long as they keep producing the best search results, they will remain the dominant search engine. And as long as they remain the dominant search engine, they will continue to make the most money and have the most power. As Oliver Stone said, they care about money and power and that’s it.

But, they aren’t the only search engine available, and they do have competition.