Google has publicly disclosed its search engine’s guidelines. Here’s what you need to know.
by Dan Clarke | 24 Nov 2015
If you work in the tech scene, and have not been living under a rock for the past week, you cannot have escaped the news last week that Google took the unprecedented step of publicly disclosing its Google Quality Rater’s Guidelines & Handbook.
At 160 pages, you wouldn’t be far wrong in thinking that it could put a can of RedBull to sleep, but this still didn’t stop some in the internet marketing world from losing their collective minds and bandying it about as though it were the Holy Grail, wrapped in the Turin Shroud, and the end of the line for SEO (search engine optimization) consultants everywhere.
For once, we got a confirmed look at the “wheels-within-wheels” that power the global internet behemoth that is Google. “At last!” marketers cried, we were handed a peek behind the curtain to see how the magic is made.
Having spent the last decade trying to understand and reverse engineer the Google search algorithm, I have long said, “Build websites for people, not for search engines”, and the search quality guidelines very much reinforces this idea throughout.