I remember reading Google's instructions for their manual page quality reviewers. It had two special sections, one on financial info, and one – you guessed it – on medical information.
Within those two categories, called "Your life or your money", reviewers were asked to pay special attention to a site's trustworthiness, with a special focus on "traditional" credentials, such as association with a known, trusted institution.
Yup - EAT and YMYL has been a thing for a long time. That's why all of our authors are on an about page, why we distinguish editors vs reviewers vs researchers, why Kamal Patle has his own page, and why we even explain our editorial process.
Thanks for the link. I never knew they google used a manual page/site quality as in input.
I can see the effect of the site quality in the search results if I search for something like "creatine benefits". Something like mayoclinic (high reputation) is #7 on google but #13 on duckduckgo. bodybuilding.com (lower reputation) is #10 on google, but #2 on duckduckgo.
selfhacked.com is #20 on google search results, but #4 from duckduckgo
examine.com is #52 on google search results, but #26 from duckduckgo
Google also ranks high results from healthline, webmd, menshealth, gnc, mensjournal, etc.
I can see how the site quality could improve results, but the effectiveness depends on the skill and neutrality of the reviewers, which I wouldn't expect to be that good. And over time it will tend to favor big, old websites, making it difficult for new websites to gain traction, even if their content is superior.
I wish google made this "Quality Search" an option just like "Safe Search". The default can be on, but we should be able to turn this off.
Within those two categories, called "Your life or your money", reviewers were asked to pay special attention to a site's trustworthiness, with a special focus on "traditional" credentials, such as association with a known, trusted institution.
Edit: Found it: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...