📑 Overall Page Quality Rating

At a high level, here are the steps of Page Quality rating:

Understand the true purpose of the page. Websites or pages without any beneficial purpose, including pages that are created with no attempt to help users, or pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, should receive the Lowest rating. No further assessment is necessary.
Otherwise, the PQ rating is based on how well the page achieves its purpose using the criteria outlined in the following sections on Lowest, Low, Medium, High, and Highest quality pages.

On Page Quality rating tasks, you will use the Page Quality sliding scale (slider) to assign the overall PQ rating. The slider looks like this:

A photo of the Page Quality rating scale

You may also use the in-between ratings of Lowest+, Low+, Medium+, and High+. Please interpret the “+” as “+ ½”, meaning that the Lowest+ rating is halfway between Lowest and Low, Low+ is halfway between Low and Medium, etc.

In the following sections, you will learn about characteristics of Lowest, Low, Medium, High, and Highest quality pages.

📑 Page Quality Rating: Most Important Factors

Here are the most important factors to consider when selecting an overall Page Quality rating:

The Purpose of the Page
Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: This is an important quality characteristic. Use your research on the additional factors below to inform your rating.
Main Content Quality and Amount: The rating should be based on the landing page of the task URL.
Website Information/information about who is responsible for the MC: Find information about the website as well as the creator of the MC.
Website Reputation/reputation about who is responsible for the MC: Links to help with reputation research will be provided.

Note: Some tasks may ask you to view the page on your phone, but to do research (e.g., finding website information and reputation) on your desktop. Other tasks may ask you to do everything on desktop. Please follow instructions in the task.

📑 Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E‑A‑T)

Remember that the first step of PQ rating is to understand the true purpose of the page. Websites or pages without some sort of beneficial purpose, including pages that are created with no attempt to help users, or pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, should receive the Lowest rating.

For all other pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E‑A‑T) is very important. Please consider:

The expertise of the creator of the MC.
The authoritativeness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website.
The trustworthiness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website.

Keep in mind that there are high E‑A‑T pages and websites of all types, even gossip websites, fashion websites, humor websites, forum and Q&A pages, etc. In fact, some types of information are found almost exclusively on forums and discussions, where a community of experts can provide valuable perspectives on specific topics.

High E‑A‑T medical advice should be written or produced by people or organizations with appropriate medical expertise or accreditation. High E‑A‑T medical advice or information should be written or produced in a professional style and should be edited, reviewed, and updated on a regular basis.
High E‑A‑T news articles should be produced with journalistic professionalism—they should contain factually accurate content presented in a way that helps users achieve a better understanding of events. High E‑A‑T news sources typically have published established editorial policies and robust review processes (example 1

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, example 2

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).
High E‑A‑T information pages on scientific topics should be produced by people or organizations with appropriate scientific expertise and represent well-established scientific consensus on issues where such consensus exists.
High E‑A‑T financial advice, legal advice, tax advice, etc., should come from trustworthy sources and be maintained and updated regularly.
High E‑A‑T advice pages on topics such as home remodeling (which can cost thousands of dollars and impact your living situation) or advice on parenting issues (which can impact the future happiness of a family) should also come from “expert” or experienced sources that users can trust.
High E‑A‑T pages on hobbies, such as photography or learning to play a guitar, also require expertise.

Some topics require less formal expertise. Many people write extremely detailed, helpful reviews of products or restaurants. Many people share tips and life experiences on forums, blogs, etc. These ordinary people may be considered experts in topics where they have life experience. If it seems as if the person creating the content has the type and amount of life experience to make him or her an “expert” on the topic, we will value this “everyday expertise” and not penalize the person/webpage/website for not having “formal” education or training in the field.

It’s even possible to have everyday expertise in YMYL topics. For example, there are forums and support pages for people with specific diseases. Sharing personal experience is a form of everyday expertise. Consider this example (opens new window). Here, forum participants are telling how long their loved ones lived with liver cancer. This is an example of sharing personal experiences (in which they are experts), not medical advice. Specific medical information and advice (rather than descriptions of life experiences) should come from doctors or other health professionals.

Think about the topic of the page. What kind of expertise is required for the page to achieve its purpose well? The standard for expertise depends on the topic of the page.