Sometime this morning, Google has abruptly removed the Search Quality Raters Guidelines PDF for the internet. It is supposed to be at this location but it 404s and nothing comes up.
Go ahead, search for [search quality raters guideline] and click on the first result, which is a PDF. It is now gone. I am not sure why.
In fact, I had several people email me that my link 404s. But the link is correct, it is that Google pulled it down.
Why did they pull it down? I am not sure but it is no longer available.
I will try to find out more information.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google says they are working on getting them back up, it may have been a technical glitch:
We're working on getting them back up. We think it's just a glitch in our end. We want them out there.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) July 26, 2018
Update 2: It is now back as of 12:45pm EDT, I am not sure if anything changed, the date on it is still the same from the last update. You can download it over here.
Update 3: Danny Sullivan confirmed this was a glitch and not done intentionally:
Yes. That's why I said we were happy to have them out there & why the link from our How Search Works area to them was still up. Just some weird glitch that we'll look into more.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) July 26, 2018
