In March 2008, Google Quality Raters handbook was leaked online. According to Pandia, this handbook is the Holy Bible on which Google judges the quality and relevancy of a web page. Some of the factors are:

Query Types:

There are three types of searches that Google operates and tries to maintain a balance between them in its SERPs.

1. Navigational: When a search is made for a website. Example: DELL.
2. Informational: When a topic specific information search is made..
3. Transactional: When a search is made in an effort towards a financial transaction, either online or offline.

Quality Rating Scales:

• Vital: A vital result comes from a query whose result page is mostly the official page of the query. It is also the highest score a query can achieve in a SERP.
• Useful: It is assigned to results that answer the query just right; they are neither too broad nor too specific." It is the second highest ranking a query can achieve in a SERP.
• Relevant: It is used for results that return less useful results. According to the guidelines, it is often "less comprehensive, comes from a less authoritative source, or covers only one important aspect of the query."
• Not Relevant: The pages that are not useful to the query, but still somehow have a connection to the query are awarded this ranking. Some of the aspects of a 'Not Relevant' result would be, "outdated, too narrowly regional, too specific, too broad".
• Off Topic: When a result is completely irrelevant to the query, it would be given a rating of 'off-topic'. It is the lowest ranking a page can receive for a query.

Categories For Results That Can't Be Rated:

The categories of results that cannot be rated are:

1. Didn't Load: Pages that return a 404 error, page not found, product not found, server time out, 403 forbidden, login required and many more.
2. Foreign Language: When the results are shown in a different language than the query language. English is never considered to be a foreign language. Hence, if a search is typed in Russian and the results are shown in English, it would not be marked as foreign language.
3. Unratable: When the rater for some other reason cannot rate a page

Spam Labels:

These labels include:

1. Not Spam: This rating is awarded to pages that haven't been designed using deceitful web design techniques."
2. Maybe Spam: This rating is given when the page is suspected of being 'Spam', but the rater can't be sure of that assumption.
3. Spam: This rating is given to pages that are proven to be violating Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Flags:

When immediate action is required towards a page, it is given a 'flag' rating.

• Pornographic content.
• Malicious codes on pages.

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