YMYL sites and E-A-T principles

Google has seriously taken up the task of cleaning up its search results from content that can directly or indirectly harm users. To attract visitors from search engines as before, it’s no longer enough to write articles with keywords and select relevant images for them. Now, resources that fall under the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) category—such as pharmaceuticals, medicine, finance, psychology, and others—are evaluated not only by algorithms but also by human raters.

Who are raters, and why is it important to understand how they work?

Google’s raters can be considered moderators of search results to some extent. They review websites and assess them based on various parameters outlined in a special guide from Google. A single rater’s evaluation is not a final judgment for a page. The ranking algorithm considers it only as one of the factors affecting the site’s position in the search results. But this is temporary; the situation will soon change.

We have already emphasized the importance of E-A-T factors when discussing what a company website should be like in 2024. Now, let’s explore how Google’s raters determine the level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness of a source.

What is YMYL and which pages fall into this category?

Content falls under YMYL if it can potentially impact a person’s physical or mental health, self-satisfaction, safety, or financial well-being in some way. According to Google, factors that affect life and health include:

• Mass media and any resources where news can be read;
• Financial websites and services;
• Pages that offer payment transactions;
• Medical services and health websites, covering diseases, pharmaceuticals, as well as commercial sites of clinics, medical centers, dental offices, cosmetic clinics, and private psychologists;
• Pages with content related to legislation and government bodies;
• Communities—projects created for communication and information exchange among groups united by common interests or characteristics (ethnicity, religion, gender, etc.).

Interestingly, Google does not rule out that YMYL might also include projects outside the mentioned niches and suggests that raters rely on their judgment when assessing how the content on the pages impacts users.

Approaches to creating content for YMYL sites

Creating content for YMYL sites requires special attention to quality, accuracy, and reliability of information.

1. Involving niche experts in content creation
   For YMYL sites, having content written and reviewed by recognized experts is a critical factor. Expertise directly impacts the site’s trustworthiness and its position in search results.
   
   Steps to implement:
   • Identify experts: Find professionals in your niche, whether they are doctors, lawyers, financial analysts, or other professionals. These experts should have verified qualifications, relevant certifications, and industry recognition.
   • Collaborate with experts: Invite experts to contribute as authors, consultants, or reviewers. It is important that their involvement is clearly highlighted on the site, with their credentials and professional achievements mentioned.
   • Create author profiles: Develop author pages that include their biographies, professional achievements, publications, and links to their profiles in scientific or professional communities.
   Tip: Provide an easy way for site visitors to contact the authors or access additional sources of information they cite.
2. Using structured data (Schema Markup)
   Structured data helps search engines better understand the content of a page, which is particularly important for YMYL sites. This can improve the site’s visibility in search results and increase the chances of appearing in rich snippets.
   
   Steps to implement:
   • Select appropriate schemas: Use schemas that match your content type. For example, medical sites might use the MedicalOrganization schema, financial sites the FinancialService schema, and legal sites the LegalService schema.
   • Implement structured data: Mark up key page elements such as articles, authors, reviews, FAQs, contact information, and other elements using JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa.
   • Test and validate: Use tools like Google Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator to check the accuracy of your structured data implementation.
   Tip: Regularly update and expand your schemas to comply with the latest search engine recommendations and algorithm changes.
3. Building a robust backlink profile

   A site’s backlink profile is a key factor in assessing its authority and trustworthiness. For YMYL sites, having high-quality backlinks is especially important.
   
   Steps to implement:

   • Create quality content: Publish research, analytical reports, infographics, and other materials that will interest authoritative sites and publications. This will increase your chances of getting natural backlinks.
   • Partner with authoritative sources: Establish partnerships with reputable publications, academic journals, and professional communities to exchange content and links.
   • Manage your reputation: Monitor mentions of your site online and respond promptly to negative reviews. If your site is linked from unreliable or dubious sources, consider using the disavow tool to reject such links.
   Tip: Regularly analyze your backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify and address potential weaknesses.
4. Regularly updating and verifying content

   Updating content is essential for maintaining its relevance and accuracy, especially in niches where information quickly becomes outdated (e.g., medicine or finance).
   
   Steps to implement:

   • Plan updates: Develop a regular content update schedule based on your industry’s specifics. This could include quarterly or annual article updates, expert reviews, or the addition of new data.
   • Fact-checking: Include fact-checking as part of your content creation process. Use primary sources and official data to verify information.
   • Archive outdated content: If content is no longer relevant, consider archiving or removing it. If necessary, add notifications to users that the information on the page may be outdated.
   Tip: Include the last updated date in your content and add notes about changes made so that users and search engines can see that information is regularly updated.

Key E-A-T factors: Authority, Expertise, and Trustworthiness

E-A-T factors—Authority, Expertise, and Trustworthiness—are the three groups of criteria that Google uses to assess site quality. The search engine derived these factors through years of research:

• 2016 — conducted a study in collaboration with experts from Harvard Medical School on approaches to obtaining reliable medical information;
• 2017 — launched the Trust Project for news organizations—a consortium aimed at combating fake news;
• 2019 — published a report supported by scientific research «How Google Fights Disinformation».

During this time, E-A-T factors gradually formed—their criteria were clarified, specified, and expanded.

How to create content that meets E-A-T requirements

Based on the rater’s guide mentioned several times in the article and our experience promoting YMYL sites, we have identified the key requirements that Google believes expert, authoritative, and trustworthy content must meet.

What to do to increase the site’s authority

• Remove useless pages and add helpful ones that can assist users in doing something or learning something.
• Check content for relevance, accuracy, and honesty so that people who access it from search can trust the information and use it without fear.
• Provide the site audience with a way to contact the content author or the person responsible for the published content—according to Google, it’s too dangerous to trust anonymous information in YMYL categories.
• Fix technical errors and design the pages to be convenient to use from any device—nothing should interfere with viewing content, and there should be no hidden buttons or other tools for manipulating user behavior.
• Distribute content to external platforms because when a site is linked to, it adds weight in Google’s criteria.
• Use different formats for presenting information, and consider that people with disabilities may use the site—ensure that it is accessible for them to consume the content.

Simply put, for a media outlet, information portal, or corporate website to reach the top of search results in the 2020s, its content must be maintained as carefully as the cleanliness and order in medical centers, clinical and pharmaceutical laboratories.

Do E-A-T factors really affect site rankings in search?

Danny Sullivan, a Google representative, admitted back in 2019 that E-A-T does affect rankings. Just not in the same way as measurable indicators, like page load speed.
You can’t program an algorithm to assess content’s expertise or authority—any content is just a set of symbolic codes for it. To teach a computer to distinguish trustworthy sites, data from raters is collected. A neural network learns from this data, “digitizes” these indicators, and only then will it form useful search results without human involvement. However, even now, E-A-T’s impact on YMYL sites is very noticeable:

• Clinic sites without author credits, certificates, licenses, and other indicators of expertise are rapidly losing positions;
• Medical and quasi-medical articles written by non-experts—with factual errors, incorrect formulations, and without references to authoritative sources—are difficult to rank in search;
• Information sites and article directories on financial topics have dropped out of search results, replaced by the banks’ and other authoritative financial institutions’ own online media;
• Blogs with advice from pseudo-lawyers, pseudo-doctors, and pseudo-cosmetologists are becoming harder to find, replaced in the top 10 by resources from authors who do not hide behind anonymity and can confirm their expertise.

The introduction of E-A-T has made SEO and content more expensive

Ranking algorithms are evolving and becoming more demanding. Simply creating a website and posting some texts on the topic, as in the late 2000s, will no longer work—it won’t attract traffic and will be a wasted effort. That’s why the cost of website development and SEO promotion is rising—high-quality expert content, building a backlink profile, optimizing code, and constantly improving user experience cannot be cheap.

Prospects for promoting YMYL sites on Google

Quality sites benefit from E-A-T. The downgrading of article directories with questionable content, fake news collections, and portals offering advice on treating any illness with handy tools will free up space in the search results for truly valuable YMYL pages.

Google didn’t just start updating the ranking algorithm yesterday to prioritize quality over keyword density per 1000 characters of text. Therefore, SEO specialists have long formed their approaches to getting client sites to the top under these new conditions. The only difference is that now it’s impossible to do this without involving niche experts, and overall, the work has increased, but the results for our clients are the best indicator that the Business Site team has adapted and continues to effectively promote sites on Google.