Find out whether google is employing human reviewers and how websites are reviewed.

2. This is a quote from an insider blogger
about human quality reviewers at Google…
“The documents are used by Google Quality
Raters to aid them in classifying
queries, measuring relevancy, and rating the
search results. To do so, the Quality Rater must
understand how Google works and this document
has a bunch of that. Let me pull out some of
those details in easy to read bullet points.

3. Three Query Types:
Navigational: someone searching for a
site, such as a search for IBM.
Informational: someone searching for
information on a topic of interest, such as
finding out more information on Danny Sullivan.
Transactional: someone searching when
seeking to purchase something either online or
offline, such as searching for „buy ipod touch.‟

4. Quality Rating Scales:
Vital: This is the highest score a web page
can receive for a query. A vital result comes
from a query that is most likely navigational
and the resulting page is the official web page
of the query. When searching for „ibm‟, the
vital result would be www.ibm.com.

5. Useful: This is the second highest score a web
page can receive for a given query. A useful
rating should be assigned to results that
“answer the query just right; they are neither
too broad nor too specific.” One of the
examples given for a useful rating would be a
search on meningitis symptoms with a resulting
web page of:
http://www.webmd.com/hw/infection/aa34586.
asp

6. Relevant: This comes after a useful rating, and
is used for results that return less useful results.
The guidelines say the result is often “less
comprehensive, come from a less authoritative
source, or cover only one important aspect of
the query.”
An example would be a review of laptop
computers, but the review only takes five
computers and not all computers within its class.
Since it is not a fully comprehensive review, it
would be rated as relevant and not useful.

7. Not Relevant: This rating is used for pages
that are not helpful to the query but are
somewhat still connected to the original query.
Classifications of a not relevant page would be
“outdated, too narrowly regional, too
specific, too broad” and so on.
One of the examples give is a search for the
„BBC‟ that returns a specific article from BBS; it
is too specific and is not relevant to the query
at hand.

8. Off-Topic: This is the lowest rating a page
can receive for a query. If the returned page
is completely not relevant to the query, it
would be given a rating of “off topic.” An
example given is a query on „hot dogs‟ that
returns a page about doghouses.

9. Categories For Results That Can’t Be
Rated: Not everything can be rated, and
those must be classified somehow. The
categories for those types of results include:
Didn’t Load: For pages that return a 404
error, page not found, product not found,
server time out, 403 forbidden, login required,
and so on.

10. Foreign Language: This is given to a page that
is in a “foreign language” to the “target
language” of the query. English is never a
foreign language, no matter what.
So, if you search in Chinese for something and a
Hebrew page is returned, it is a foreign
language, but if an English page is returned, it is
not a foreign language. There are exceptions to
the rule.
Unratable: When the rater cannot rate it for
any other reason.

11. Spam Labels: Now for the really good
stuff, spam labels. This is a new addition to the
quality raters guidelines and is fairly small. The
labels include:
Not Spam: The not spam rating is given to
pages that “has not been designed using
deceitful web design techniques.”

12. Maybe Spam: This label is given when you
feel the page is “spammy,” but you are not
100% convinced of that.
Spam: Given to pages you feel are violating
Google‟s webmaster guidelines.

13. Flags: Flags are for pages that require
immediate attention, such as:
Adult content
Malicious code on pages

14. That is a brief overview of some of the many
points in the document. For more, see the
archived document and for some
history, check out Google Blogoscoped.
Here is an additional copy of this document
at Huomah.com”
source – http://searchengineland.com/the-
google-quality-raters-handbook-13575