Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) is a publicly available document — running to several hundred pages — that instructs the human contractors Google employs to evaluate search results. Raters assess page quality, the degree to which results satisfy user intent, and potential harm. Their ratings are not used to rank individual pages but feed into how Google trains and evaluates its ranking algorithms. The guidelines define key concepts including YMYL and E-E-A-T. Reading the QRG is one of the most direct ways to understand what Google actually values: it explains in plain language how evaluators distinguish high-quality from low-quality content. Google updates the document periodically; SEOs monitor new versions for shifts in emphasis.