The presentation prepared by Kiran Nair highlights how Google’s team of search quality raters perform search queries and rank the links that show up in Google’s search engine results page. Taking into account all the rating guidelines and Google’s approach to rate a particular URL, we have also listed out the paradigm shift that we need to follow so that our SEO efforts get aligned with Google’s rating.

1. Prepared by
- Kiran Nair

2.  How to rate an URL?
 Research the query
 Click on the URL to visit the landing page
 Assign a rating based on the guidelines

4.  In-order to rate/evaluate the landing pages one needs to
understand the user intent
 E.g.:When a user in U.S searches for tetris the most likely
user intent is to play the gameTetris

5.  All queries have a task language and task location. Users in
different parts of the world may have different expectations for
the same query.
 E.g.: Query: football
In US
but in UK it means soccer.

6.  Action intent (Do)
 Information intent (Know)
 Navigation intent (Go)

7.  The intent of an action query is to accomplish a goal like :
 E.g.:The intent of a user entering the query download adobe
reader is to download the software

8.  The goal of an information query is to find
information.
 E.g.: Query: how to tie a tie?

9.  The intent of a navigation query is to locate a specific
webpage. Users have a single webpage or website in mind.
This single webpage is called the target of the query.
 E.g.: Query : iphone wikipedia
 TargetWebpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

10.  The rating scale offers five rating options that are based on
user intent and the utility of the landing page:

11.  The Vital rating is used for situations like:
1. The most likely intent of the query is navigation, and the
landing page is the target of the navigation query.
2. The most likely query intent is an entity and the landing
page is the official webpage of the entity.
 E.g.: Query: cristiano ronaldo
User Intent: Go to the official Homepage
http://www.cristianoronaldo.com –Vital Rating

12.  AppropriateVital: The version of the official page seems
right for the task location
E.g.: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/ for UK
 InternationalVital: The page is a “choose your language”
or “choose your location” page.
E.g.: http://www.ikea.com/
 OtherVital: The language or location of the official page
does not match the task location, and a better version
exists.
E.g.: http://www.ikea.com/dk/da/ for Germany

13.  A rating of Useful is assigned to pages that are
very helpful for most users. Useful pages should
be high quality and a good “fit” for the query.
 E.g.: Query: broadway tickets.
User Intent: Buy broadway tickets
http://www.ticketmaster.com/broadway

14.  A rating of Relevant is assigned to pages that are helpful for
many or some users. Relevant pages fits the query, but they
might be less comprehensive, less up-to-date, come from a
less authoritative source, or cover only one important aspect
of the query.
 E.g.: Query: Abraham lincoln birthday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Presidents
_by_date_of_birth can be rated as relevant since Lincoln’s
birthday is not prominently displayed

15.  A rating of Slightly Relevant is assigned to pages that are not
very helpful for most users, but are somewhat related to the
query. Slightly Relevant pages may be low quality and/or
contain less helpful information.
 E.g.: Query : Pregnancy symptoms
BUT….
Is it

16.  Assigned to pages that are not helpful for majority of the
users. Off-Topic or Useless pages are unrelated to the
query and have no utility.
 E.g.:
Query:
Result:

17.  Some queries look like URLs.These queries are called URL
Queries.
 E.g.:
Result: http://www.sitemaps.org/

18.  Some of the information queries may be about recent or
past events. For some queries, timeliness is very important.
 E.g.: Query: us open golf results
Intent : to get information on the most recent results for the
tournament.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_U.S._Open_%28golf%29 can be rated
as useful since it displays the most recent results.

19.  DifferentTypes of Flags:
 Spam Flag
 Pornography Flag
 Malicious Flag

20.  Pages are assigned a spam flag if they have spam signals as
specified inWebspam Guidelines
 The different types of spam flags that can be assigned are:
Not Spam
Maybe
Spam
Spam

21.  Pornography Flag is to be assigned to all the pages that
contain pornographic content like porn images, links, pop-
ups, videos or ads

22.  A page should be assigned a Malicious flag if:
 You are forced to quit your Firefox browser due to prompts
that keep coming back and will not go away
 There are attempts to download spyware,Trojans, viruses,
etc.

24.  For certain queries it is important that we know the user
location in-order to understand the query intent of the
user.
 E.g.: Query: User location:
Query: Pictures of kitten
User location:

26.  For page quality rating the user has to click on the URL and
then evaluate the landing page.When a page loads one
needs to look at 2 parameters:
 Does the landing page load?
 Is the page in the task language or English

27.  The content on a webpage can be classified into 3 sections:
 Main Content (MC)
 Supplementary Content (SC)
 Advertisements (Ads)

28. Main Content
Side
Navigation
Supplementary
Content
(Satisfying the purpose of the
Page)
(Navigation to
similar pages of
the same
website)
Ads
Not related
to the
website

29.  Rating the content is an important step
of page quality rating
 If the main content is helpful and it
achieves its purpose then it can be
rated as high or highest
 Uniqueness of the content is also
important

30.  For page quality rating it is also important to analyze the
entire website. Some website checks that needs to be
performed are:
 Finding Home Page of the website –The home page
should be easily accessed via the landing page through
links or by the website logo
 Purpose of the landing page should be consistent with the
entire website
 It should be clear who is responsible for the content
present on the website.The contact us / about us section
gives information about who owns the site

31.  Reputation research in Page Quality rating is very important
 Websites reputation is based on the experience of users and
opinion of experts in the topic on the website
 Online stores have user ratings which help other users to
understand the stores reputation

32.  Identify the "homepage" of the website
 Try one or more of the following searches on Google:
 homepage reviews (ebay reviews)
 homepage complaints (ebay complaints)
 homepage -site:homepage.com (ebay –site:ebay.com)
 link:homepage.com (link:ebay.com/)

33.  URL rating is dependent on the quality of landing page as
well as the query in the task whereas Page quality rating is
query independent.
 High quality pages should not always have a high URL rating
as the page might not be helpful to the user

34. [Elton John], English (US)
Likely User Intent • Do – Purchase music performed by Elton John
• Know – Users want information or news about Elton John
• Go – Users want to go to the homepage of Elton John’s
official website
Vital
The homepage of Elton John’s official and well maintained
website
Useful – helpful for most users
• Quality pages with biographical or good general
information, such as this Wikipedia page about Elton John
• Amazon page with Elton John MP3 downloads and CDs for
sale:
Relevant – helpful for many or some users • A timely article about Elton John
• Lyrics website page with links to lyrics of many Elton John
songs
Slightly Relevant – helpful for few users An outdated article about Elton John
Off-Topic or Useless – helpful for very few or no users Very low quality page with keyword stuffing including multiple
displays of “elton john” and “elton john tickets

36.  Webspam is a term for webpages introduced by webmasters
that are used to trick search engines and draw users to their
website.
 Webspam is commonly referred as Spam and webmasters
who use these spamming techniques are known as
Spammers
 Spam flags do not depend on a relationship between the
query and the landing page.

37.  When evaluating a page for spam one should look for the
following:
 Hidden text and hidden links
 Keyword stuffing
 Sneaky redirects
 Cloaking with JavaScript redirects and 100% frame

39.  We know that Google defines 3 types of user
intent for queries
 Do
 Know
 Go

40.  There are different types of websites catering
to different purposes
 E-commerce site or brand selling products
 Service provider
 Informational site

41.  For e-commerce sites:
 Do : Know : Go = (high : low : high)
 For Service Provider
 Do : Know : Go = (medium : high : low)
 Information site
 Do : Know : Go = (low : high : medium)

42. Type of Website Do Query Go Query Know Query
E-commerce
Website
60% 25% 15%
Information Site 15% 25% 60%
Service Provider 30% 50% 20%

43.  Step 1: Divide the keyword basket into keyword
clusters
 Step 2 : For a keyword cluster map the keywords to
different URLs based on their intent.
Keyword Cluster A Mapped URL
Keyword 1
Primary Page
Keyword 2
Keyword 3 Support page 1
Keyword 4 Support page 2

44.  While creating content we should understand the
query intent of keywords that have been mapped on
a page.
 So while specifying the content themes we need to
keep in mind the actual query intent.

45. http://www.abc.com/
Paragraph 1 Use Keywords Keyword Instance
Provide content themes according to the query intent Keyword 1, Keyword 2 1-2
Paragraph 2
1-2
Provide content themes according to the query intent Keyword 3, Keyword4, Keyword5
Paragraph 3
1-2
Provide content themes according to the query intent Keyword 4, Keyword1
Total no. of Recommended Words on
Page 200-300

46.  For each keyword we need to have all the
variations which can probably match the 3
search intent
 Then we need to link those keywords to the
appropriate webpage using a diversified link
structure.