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In 2013, Google first mentioned Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) in an updated version of their Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Today, YMYL is an integral part of these guidelines and influences how Google’s algorithms perceive the quality of your webpages.
Know that any webpage that could significantly impact someone’s financial stability or health, or society’s welfare, could fall under the YMYL topic category.
As SEOs, we’ve long known that Google looks for signals to determine whether webpages are helpful and trustworthy. In the YMYL section of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, Google defines YMYL and walks us through its process for reviewing the quality of high-risk search results.
Google’s search raters assign Page Quality (PQ) scores when they analyze websites, and webpages serving YMYL topics have higher standards than non-YMYL topics.
I spent the first six or seven years of my career in a Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) category of organic search — specifically, in personal finance. For websites creating content in the YMYL space, the bar is much higher in terms of content quality, the website’s overall trustworthiness, and user experience.
Here, we recap why Google cares about YMYL, explain how Google describes YMYL in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, provide some general tips for putting your best foot forward for search raters and Google’s algorithm, and discuss how YMYL websites might be impacted by Google’s new AI Overviews.
Why Google Cares About YMYL
“Don't be evil” — Google’s former motto. Delivering potentially harmful search results in a high-risk YMYL topic space would be evil.
Simply put, Google wants to deliver a great experience for searchers. If Google were to deliver an unhelpful or inaccurate webpage for a highly sensitive topic, like “how to cure heart disease,” searchers’ lives could be negatively impacted. That might cause searchers to trust Google less and, as a result, use Google less often. If searchers trust Google, they’ll continue to use Google to find information online.
And if more people trust and use Google, Google will make more money by displaying Google Ads. In other words, Google is financially motivated to deliver accurate and helpful information for searchers. And it just so happens that YMYL topics are also some of the most expensive keywords to bid on within Google Ads and an essential source of revenue for Google.
Also, reputationally, it would be harmful for Google’s brand to deliver life-threatening or harmful information.
Understanding YMYL in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines
In section 2.3 of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, “Your Money Your Life (YMYL) Topics,” Google explains how they define a YMYL topic. Understanding whether a topic is a YMYL topic is an important early step for a search rater because it changes how the search rater will review the webpage.
As a website owner, determining whether your webpage or website falls under YMYL is important because that tells you whether you need to operate with a higher quality bar.
Google goes on to say that YMYL is a spectrum. Some topics are clearly YMYL, other topics are clearly not YMYL, and some topics are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Google goes onto to provide some examples of the spectrum:
If you’re ever unsure whether a topic is YMYL, you can apply a simple test:
For example, if we wrote an article that provided suggestions on applying for a home equity loan, we’d be targeting a searcher who is about to make a pretty significant financial decision. This is clearly a YMYL topic: an article that talked about applying for a home equity loan would receive additional scrutiny by Google’s quality raters and search algorithms, which are trained on quality rater feedback.
But it isn’t always black and white. For example, some topics might be closely related to a YMYL topic but might not fall under YMYL directly — for example, an article about student loan news. This article would likely fall under YMYL because it’s related to a major financial decision, but given the exact topic, the searcher is probably just looking for relevant news related to student loans, rather than advice about their student loans or a place to apply for a loan.
Quality of Main Content & YMYL
In section 3.2 of the search rater guidelines, “Quality of Main Content,” Google explains its process for evaluating the quality of a page’s Main Content (MC). As defined by Google, the MC “is any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose.”
Google mentions YMYL again, specifically in this section describing how to evaluate the quality of MC:
Google reiterates that accuracy is very important for YMYL topics, and that your pages should align to the “well-established expert consensus.”
Reputation of the Website
In section 3.3.1, “Reputation of the Website,” Google mentions YMYL again:
In other words, when evaluating the quality of a search result, Google’s search raters attempt to determine whether the website’s reputation is positive or negative.
They go on to describe the process for judging the reputation of a website in section 3.3.3, “How to Search for Reputation Information about a Website.” Google’s search raters look to see that your website is referenced, recommended, and well known, and that those references come from sources that have expertise in the field.
For example, if I had a website about a health-related topic and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services referenced my website in a positive way, that would be a positive signal.
As another example, if I were selling a health-related product, but the product had a lot of negative reviews, that could be seen as negative.
Google goes on to say that if the reputation of a website can’t be established, the search rater needs to pay additional attention to other PQ considerations, especially for webpages on YMYL topics.
E-E-A-T
In section 3.4, “Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trust (E-E-A-T),” Google describes the process of using signals to establish trust of a website, an important consideration when judging PQ.
For YMYL topics specifically, Google reiterates the importance of accuracy and preventing harm.
When assessing E-E-A-T, Google explains that search raters should pay attention to what is happening on the website itself — for example, whether the website has a clear About Us page or appropriate legal disclaimers. Moreover, Google will look for signals that the author has expertise in a given topic — for example, does the webpage include an author name and an author bio that clearly explains their expertise.
Google mentions again that off-page references — for example, reviews — could be another way to judge a website’s E-E-A-T.
Reputation, E-E-A-T, and accuracy are important for all websites. The difference is that for YMYL topics, these criteria are scrutinized more closely in the calculation of PQ.
Balancing Experience and Expertise
You might be thinking, “Google keeps reiterating expertise and expert consensus, but does that mean I can’t offer my own opinions based on my experience?”
Google recognizes that for certain YMYL topics, searchers want to see content based on unique personal experiences, whether that’s because they want to seek comfort or to learn from others.
On our blog, I always try to bring my personal experiences into my content. I often want the reader to feel like they are having a conversation with me. But that doesn’t mean that my content can’t have high E-E-A-T and be factually accurate, while also including personal opinions or experiences.
In this section, Google reiterates that pages that sharing first-hand experience on YMYL topics could be considered to have high E-E-A-T, “as long as the content is trustworthy, safe, and consistent with well-established expert consensus.”
In other words, yes, you can write about your personal experiences and opinions, as long as those experiences or opinions don’t contradict well-established expert consensus. This is largely my approach to the content on our website. I share my experiences with a given topic but support any claims I make with expert sources, and I don’t say anything totally wrong (that’s the goal at least).
However, Google does say that certain topics need to be addressed by an expert, and that for these topics, personal experience is not as helpful. Google provides this table highlighting a few examples of when we can lean toward experience and when we should focus on expertise:
For example, if a searcher were looking for a tool for saving for retirement, a blog post containing actual reviews based on personal experience would be helpful. However, if the searcher were looking for specific recommendations about what to invest in, that information would need to come from an expert.
But if you’re an expert on saving for retirement, it's possible to marry the two. You could share your personal experiences and provide any necessary information to support the claims or advice you are providing.
The lowest-quality content would be written by non-experts, be factually inaccurate, and contain no actual experiences. Those pages would be harmful to searchers.
Your Anything or Your Life
On a recent episode of the Optimize podcast, Dwayne Hogan and I joked that these days, every website could impact someone’s life or livelihood.
Technically, Google would say that there are clearly YMYL topics that can have an impact and clearly other topics that are very unlikely to have an impact.
But I think the point that Dwayne and I were trying to make is that while your website might not fall into a YMYL topic space, we can use the same principles to think critically about the quality of all our webpages.
Our website, largely a blog about content marketing and SEO, is clearly not addressing a YMYL topic. But we apply these principles to our webpages because they are helpful.
For example, on our website, we want to highlight expert opinions, provide accurate information, and showcase our expertise. While Google’s algorithms might not place as much importance on these signals for our website, I’d make the argument that these characteristics will ultimately have an impact on conversions and whether someone would want to do business with us.
Search Raters Train the Algorithm and Don’t Impact Your Website
It’s important to note that when search raters are reviewing webpages under YMYL guidelines, that scoring won’t directly impact the rankings of your webpage. Simply put, Google’s search raters can’t review all webpages or even a tiny fraction of webpages on the internet.
Instead, the scoring will provide data to Google to suggest how their algorithm changes are impacting the quality of search results. For example, if Google makes an algorithm change, and then search raters provide lower quality scores for search results, that might prompt Google to adjust or roll back algorithm changes.
Additionally, this data helps Google’s algorithms better understand the characteristics of high-quality and low-quality search results. If the algorithms can correlate your pages to characteristics of known high-quality pages, that suggests to them that your webpage is also a high-quality page (so you’d think it would rank higher).
Prioritizing YMYL Signals
While it’s difficult to manufacture E-E-A-T or YMYL signals, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Proper Sourcing to First Parties
Sourcing, just do it.
Anytime you make a claim, you should back it up with a source. Moreover, you should back it up with the first-party source, and not a third-party source highlighting a first-party source.
I have no problem externally linking from my webpages to other helpful webpages, even if they exist on competitive websites.
If linking to a first party to support your claim improves the searcher's experience, you should do it.
Of course, we want to source from authoritative websites that have direct experience within our topic space. We don’t want to source from untrustworthy websites.
Sourcing from Experts
Think like a journalist. Journalists typically ask sources for additional context and insights if they write a piece of content.
You’ll notice that I often quote SEO experts in our blog posts. Given that we have a weekly SEO podcast, we have no shortage of expert takes and opinions, and we often work excerpts from our podcast into our blog pages to provide more perspective for our readers.
For example, in the example above, I quoted four guests from our blog post in a section of an article about the costs of hiring freelance writers. This question comes up often on our podcast, and I believe this context is helpful for readers.
Hiring Writers with Expertise in Your Industry
When hiring freelance writers, I’ll always lean towards hiring writers with real, in-depth experience in your field.
For one, the content they produce will often be more helpful and engaging. But this also allows us to clearly show that the authors on our website are experts in the field.
For example, on our blog, you’ve likely seen Lizzie Davey’s byline:
By the time we hired Lizzie, she’d already created content for some leading brands and had direct experience building content marketing campaigns.
Lizzie’s expertise shines through in the content she creates for us. In her bio, we make it clear that Lizzie is an expert in the topic space and qualified to be writing about these topics.
Clearly Display Author’s Information
In Google’s search rater guidelines, they reiterate that when determining PQ, the search rater needs to be able to identify who created the MC and whether that person is qualified to be creating that MC.
They also look for signals that suggest the reputation of the content creator:
At a minimum, you should display the author’s byline on your webpage:
If you can, you should include an author bio explaining why the author is experienced and capable of writing in the topic space. For example, Lizzie’s bio mentions that she has worked with fantastic content marketing teams.
Trust & Supplementary Content
Remember, Google’s search raters and algorithms are looking for signals that would suggest that a website should be trusted.
You should ensure that your website has a clear About Us page that explains who you are and why you exist.
If it would be helpful for users who land on your website, you could also implement a press section and appropriate legal disclaimers.
Google defines “Supplementary Content” as content that exists on the website that contributes to a good user experience but that does not directly help a page achieve its purpose.
In the Supplementary Content sections of your webpage, you should do what is best for the searcher, such as having an easy-to-use navigation bar.
If you’re displaying ads on your website, you should ensure that those advertisements aren’t disruptive to the user experience.
YMYL and AI Overviews
While some SEOs speculated that YMYL topics would not be served by AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience [SGE]) snippets due to the high risk of inaccuracy, Google has stated that YMYL keywords could be served by SGE:
In a recent interview with Hema Budaraju, Google’s Senior Director of Product, Search Generative Experience, Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land confirmed that AI Overviews could appear on YMYL search results, including results for finance, health, and medical queries.
Google makes it clear that if it decides to show an AI Overviews snippet for a YMYL query, that snippet will be held to an even higher standard.
Google mentions that it might display disclaimers emphasizing that searchers should not rely solely on the instant answer and that they should consult a medical professional for health-related queries in particular. Here is an example:
I did need to expand the AI Overviews snippet to see this disclaimer, but it is there.
According to Semrush’s data, AI Overviews appear in 0.44% of health-related queries and close to 0% of finance-related queries as of this writing. However, this is just one early data point, and it will likely take some time for us to gather more complete data.
Final Thoughts
When creating webpages in the Your Money or Your Life topic space, know that Google’s search raters and algorithm will scrutinize your pages more closely.
Given the nature of these keywords and their potential impact on a searcher’s health or livelihood, Google is incentivized to hold these pages to a higher standard.
Moreover, YMYL topic spaces are often fairly volatile, and if you are ranking in these keyword spaces, don’t be surprised to see bigger ranking changes during algorithm updates.
Showcasing your expertise and trustworthiness in the page’s main and secondary content is important. There are many ways to do that, including diligently sourcing when making claims, adding trust signals, and hiring expert content writers with firsthand experience.
Google’s new AI Overviews are changing the way that searchers discover information online, but it is clear that AI Overviews will be included in YMYL queries.
