YMYL

The name comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the manual Google gives the human evaluators who grade sample search results. A topic is YMYL only when the subject itself could hurt people, not because someone could theoretically weaponize any page. It is a spectrum: “symptoms of a heart attack” or “how to invest money” sit at the strict end, while shopping for pencils does not qualify.

The four kinds of YMYL harm

The September 2025 guidelines tell raters to test a topic against four harm types:

• Health or Safety (physical, mental, emotional, online)
• Financial Security (ability to support yourself and your family)
• Government, Civics & Society (public interest, elections, trust in institutions)
• Other (anything that could hurt people or society’s wellbeing)

Because the stakes are high, raters demand strong E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust), and the guidelines call Trust “the most important member of the E-E-A-T family.” For advice on a clear YMYL topic, “a high level of expertise may be required for the page to be trustworthy.” First-hand experience can still score well when the content is “trustworthy, safe, and consistent with well-established expert consensus,” but things like which medications are safe during pregnancy, or how to fill out tax forms, are the examples Google says are best left to experts.

One caveat: rater guidelines describe how Google trains evaluators, not a direct ranking factor. They still map closely to what Google’s helpful-content systems reward, so treating YMYL topics as high-stakes is the safe read.