How Google ranks medical content

YMYL stands for "Your Money or Your Life." This classification applies to content that could significantly impact a person's health, financial stability, or safety.^[1]

Healthcare content is a prime example of YMYL. Misinformation about symptoms, treatments, or medications could lead to serious harm.

Google holds YMYL content to higher quality standards than entertainment or general interest content.^[1]

For YMYL content, Google's quality raters specifically look for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.^[1]

E-E-A-T signals: Clear author credentials, professional affiliations, and verifiable expertise. The first "E" – Experience – was added in 2022 to reward content from practitioners with real-world clinical experience.^[1]

Accuracy: Content should align with medical consensus and cite reputable sources. Google's quality raters compare medical content against established health authorities like the NIH, CDC, and Mayo Clinic.

Freshness: Medical information should be current, especially for evolving topics. Pages with outdated treatment recommendations or superseded clinical guidelines are downranked.

Comprehensiveness: Thorough coverage of topics without omitting important information. A page about a medical condition should address symptoms, causes, diagnosis, treatment options, and when to seek care.

User experience: Fast loading, mobile-friendly, accessible, and easy to navigate.^[2]

Google employs thousands of quality raters who manually evaluate websites using the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. For medical content, raters assess the "Page Quality" and "Needs Met" on a scale from Lowest to Highest.^[1]

Raters check whether the content creator has relevant medical credentials. A board-certified physician writing about their specialty receives higher trust than anonymous or unqualified content.

They also evaluate the website's overall reputation. Medical practice websites with clear "About" pages, practitioner bios with verifiable credentials, and links to professional organizations score higher.

While rater evaluations don't directly affect individual page rankings, they inform the algorithms Google uses to assess content quality at scale.^[1]

Anonymous content: Medical content should always have clear authorship with verifiable credentials.^[1]

Missing sources: Claims should be backed by references to peer-reviewed research or authoritative medical organizations.

Outdated information: Medical guidelines change. Stale content signals low quality.

Exaggerated claims: "Cure" language, unproven treatments, and sensational headlines trigger quality filters.

Thin content: Pages that don't fully address the topic or provide real value.^[2]

Missing structured data: Without schema markup (MedicalWebPage, Physician, MedicalCondition), Google may not fully understand your content's medical context.