Google: We Don't Hard Code YMYL Categories Into Our Algorithm

Oct 25, 2021 - 7:21 am 1 by

Energy Google

Google's John Mueller was asked if energy supply types of websites would fall into the YMYL, your money - your life, category and thus have to hold to a higher standard for E-A-T concepts. John said, he doesn't have an "absolute answer" because Google does not have categories "hard-coded in the algorithms."

John said "I don't know. So I think for things like this on the one hand, we don't have this like hard-coded in the algorithms, that we try to look at for these specific kinds of pieces of content. So it's it's not something where we would have an absolute answer."

What John is saying that it isn't straight forward to say that a site about energy supply for the household or telecommunications supply for the household would fall into the YMYL category.

What is interesting is that John said you can test it with your users. He said "you can ask users directly or you can do like a small user study or where you could do maybe A/B testing on your website. Where you have some of your content with an author or some of it without an author and you just kind of see like from almost like a natural point of view do users react differently to this content and based on that make make your decision."

The author bit here really does stand out to me.

He also suggested that you "look at the the quality rater guidelines and see what kind of sites they're talking about there." If you think your content falls into those categories, then it might.

This question came up at the 51:07 mark into the video, here is the embed:

Forum discussion at YouTube Community.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 4, 2025

Jul 4, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June 2025 Core Update, Search Volatility, Insights Report, Ads & More

Jul 4, 2025 - 8:01 am
Bing Search

Bing Search Tests Zoomable & Sticky Related Searches

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google AI Mode Can Respond In Non-English Languages

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests Local Place Listings In Green

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Merchant Center Gains Automatic Shipping Updates

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google Ads 3 Strike Bowling Automation For Removing Violating Ads