YMYL Definition & Meaning

What Is YMYL?

YMYL is an acronym for the phrase “Your Money or Your Life”, which is a type of content categorized by Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines as selling products or services or providing information that can impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

YMYL forms the foundation of Google’s content quality standards along with the E-E-A-T concept (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust).

Google differentiates between clear, possible, and unlikely YMYL topics. YMYL topics come from the news, shopping, government, finance, and health categories. Ranking web pages with YMYL content is more difficult than ranking other pages because Google uses higher quality standards for the content.

Building a reputable YMYL site takes time because Google is unlikely to push a new YMYL site to the top of its search results until it determines its trustworthiness and credibility. Creating expertly written content and interviewing professionals with relevant experience and industry-related credentials are among the best strategies YMYL websites can use to build authority for search engine algorithms.

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