Google Quality Rater Guidelines Updated July 27, 2017

[engine]

Google has updated its Quality Rater Guidelines again, and this time the focus is on International, non-English sites and SERPs, and sites with both International and English on the same site.

In addition, there's a conspiracy theory example to help get over the challenges of assessing and deciding upon a fake news item and fake news site.

Jennifer Slegg, as usual, over at TheSEMPost, has a great summary of all the changes, and here is a link to the excellent summary, [thesempost.com] along with a link to the Google Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF).
[static.googleusercontent.com...]

[aristotle]

In my mind one of the biggest mysteries about google's ranking algorithm is how does it measure trustworthiness and authority. This part of the algorithm may be the key to their efforts to identify fake news and false information.

Another question is whether their changes for detecting fake and false news, could have spilled onto other parts of the web and affected the rankings of sites with other kinds of information.

[engine]

Webmasters should read the Rater Guidelines, especially if their ranking has suddenly dropped, and it's not connected to an update we're reporting in our Google update thread. [webmasterworld.com] It's a more detailed view of how Google decides a site meets its criterion for what it describes as acceptable content.

[keyplyr]

Just read the Quality Rater Guidelines again. I'm not doing anything that may directly affect my web properties - but - sites that link to me may be guilty, which may devalue backlinks and hence affect my ranking.

[seoskunk]

sites that link to me may be guilty, which may devalue backlinks and hence affect my ranking.

Since you have no control over this I think its a misuse of time concerning yourself about it, Jeez we have enough to worry about with our own properties let alone other peoples.

[keyplyr]

I strongly disagree. Backlinks are one of the most significant components in ranking.

Since you have no control over this

Sure you do. This is what the disavow file is for.

There were some significant changes, but mostly as it pertains to non-English results. So it could be that Google is working on quality and spam in non-English language results.

Since I have a sizeable engagement from an International audience, this is of particular concern to my interests.

[nonstop]

"God created the world in 7 days"

Fact or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

"There was once a city that was submerged in water called Atlantis"

Fact or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

"There was once a boy called Harry who went to school and was able to cast spells"

Fact or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

"JFK was shot by a someone on the grassy knoll"

Fact or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

[engine]

Backlinks do play a role in the many signals received. What evidence do I have?
New sites tested with no links at all.
Add only links and BOOM! Well, for a short while boom, until the other signals kick in.

[aristotle]

Add only links and BOOM!

What kind of links are you referring to? If you're talking about easy-to-build low quality links, I doubt they would have much effect. As for high-quality backlinks, for most people they're not easy to build.

Also, a site that gets hardly any traffic can't attract many "natural" backlinks because very few people see it. If you suddenly build a lot of links to it, this could look suspicious and for that reason not have the desired effect.

[riccarbi]

The disavow links function is one of the greatest absurdities in the internet history. Why on earth - instead of caring about my readers, publishing better content, making my websites faster, amending typos, removing dead links, and so on - should I lose my time chasing someone I didn't know the existence before who is linking my pages from a garbage site in India or Belarus? Bad links should simply be automatically excluded from contributing to a website's trustworthiness. It makes no sense whatsoever that a link by someone else you don't have any control over would penalize your site, as long as Google's algorithm is smart as they say.

[Jori]

Google algo is not smart. And what proof they have that it is not you behind the garbage links?
For me, it's simple : Google should only pay attention to quality links, paid or not, and simply forget about garbage links.