On Thursday, September 11, 2025, Google updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF document. The last time Google updated this document was on January 23, 2025, over seven months ago. This update gives minor clarification as it relates to rating YMYL content and adds a handful of additional examples for rating newer features like AI Overviews. Google also posted fixes for typos and other minor clarifications.
The AI Overview examples seem to mirror examples that Google provided for featured snippets and knowledge panels.
The document was expanded from 181 pages to 182 pages, so it is only a one-page addition.
What Changed
Google posted these items in the change log:
- Updated YMYL definitions
- Added additional examples for clarity
- Minor changes throughout (fixed typos, etc.)
Here are some examples of the AI Overviews being added to the document:
Another section updated was the YMYL definitions, which were to clarify them. Google now writes:
YMYL Government, Civics & Society: Topics that could negatively impact groups of people, issues of public interest, trust in public institutions, election and voting information, and any other informational topics about government, civics or society that impacts people's live.
It used to say:
YMYL Society: Topics that could negatively impact groups of people, issues of public interest, trust in public institutions, etc
Those were the most significant changes I could find in the documents, at a high level. I didn't list all the various AI Overview examples but I put some of them above as a preview.
Previous Search Quality Rater Guidelines
Here are the previous versions of the search quality rater guidelines, if you want to download them all and compare them:
- September 11, 2025 PDF download link
- Janaury 23, 2025 PDF download link
- March 5, 2024 PDF download link
- November 16, 2023 PDF download link
- December 15, 2022 PDF download link
- July 28, 2022 PDF download link
- October 19, 2021 PDF download link
- October 14, 2020 PDF download link
- December 5, 2019 PDF download link
- May 16, 2019 PDF download link
- June 20, 2018 PDF download link
- July 27, 2017 PDF download link
What Are Quality Raters & Guidelines
Google wrote these guidelines are what is used by Google's third-party search raters to help evaluate the performance of the various Google search ranking systems, and their ratings do not directly influence Google's search ranking. "The guidelines share important considerations for what content is helpful for people when using Google Search," Google added. Google's page on how to create helpful, people-first content summarizes these concepts for creators to help them self-assess their own content to be successful in Google Search, Google added.
Forum discussion at X.
