Matt McGee published An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater this past Friday, it is the most detailed write up on a quality rater I have seen to date.
It goes through the various tasks, how they got the job, what interaction at all they have with Google and so on. Matt also posted the short version at Marketing Land:
- Raters are only hired after passing two tests, the second of which includes rating more than 140 different Google search results and demands a 90 percent score in order to pass.
- Each rating task is completed by multiple raters and, if they disagree in their ratings of Google’s search results, there’s a formal discussion and debate process that may involve higher-level moderators making the final decision on who’s correct.
- Raters don’t only look at Google’s organic results, they may rate Google’s paid search results as well as search results from News, Maps and other Google “universal search” products.
- Raters may also have tasks that involve grading the design and layout of specific web pages.
- One of the key considerations in those tasks involves the balance between content and ads on a page. (That’s reminiscent of Google’s new page layout algorithm that was just announced on Thursday.)
- Tasks are not tailored to the Rater’s skills or interests.
There is discussion on this interview on Matt McGee's Google+ page where some SEOs are diving into what they learned.
Forum discussion at Google+.
Image credit: Maxx-Studio / ShutterStock.
