Google Search Quality Rater: How to recognise visits and prepare yourself

Learn how to tell if a Google Search Quality Rater has visited your site and how to best prepare for such a visit.

What exactly is a Google Search Quality Rater?

Google's Search Quality Raters are people who rate websites to improve the quality of search results. While these ratings don't directly influence rankings, they do feed into Google's algorithm updates. Therefore, it is mega important to know how they work.

When do they visit your site?

Imagine your website suddenly shows up in Google's top 10 search results for a hotly contested keyword. That could be the moment when a Quality Rater stops by. He then checks whether your site really has the quality that Google wants for its users.

How do I recognise their visit?

Easier than you think: Look at the referral traffic of your website. Do you see the domain raterhub.com there? Bingo, that's a clear sign of a visit. RaterHub is the platform where raters give their feedback on visited pages.

How do I prepare for this?

The secret lies in the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines. This document describes exactly how raters evaluate websites. One critical point is EEAT:

  1. Experience: Does the author have practical experience on the topic?
  2. Expertise: Does the author have specialist knowledge?
  3. Authoritativeness: How recognised is the author or the site?
  4. Trustworthiness: Is the site reliable and trustworthy?
  5. Trustworthiness is particularly important here, especially for sites that deal with sensitive topics.

What happens after your visit?

There are no hard and fast rules. But some have observed that their top 10 rankings for certain keywords disappear after 10-14 days after a Rater visit. Of course, this can be coincidence, but keeping an eye on it doesn't hurt.

Conclusion

Visiting a Google Search Quality Rater is no reason to panic. But it does show that your website is becoming important. The key is to always focus on quality and know the Google Guidelines. That way you'll be well prepared for any visit.

Good luck and rock on! 🚀



Published by: Silvio - Published on: 27.06.2023