Rule Details

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) is Google's term for content that could significantly affect a person's health, safety, financial stability, or wellbeing. In Google's Quality Rater Guidelines (opens in new tab), these pages face the highest scrutiny, which is why they usually need stronger trust signals than general informational content.

Code Examples

Experience

Show real, first-hand engagement with the topic:

<!-- Author bio excerpt -->
<p>This article was written by Dr. Sarah Chen, who has treated over 1,000 patients
with Type 2 diabetes in her 15 years of clinical practice.</p>

Expertise

Demonstrate formal or deep practical knowledge:

<!-- Author credentials block -->
<div class="author-credentials">
  <img src="/photos/dr-chen.jpg" alt="Dr. Sarah Chen">
  <h3>Dr. Sarah Chen, MD</h3>
  <p>Board-certified endocrinologist, Stanford Medical School graduate,
     member of the American Diabetes Association.</p>
  <a href="/about/dr-sarah-chen">Full bio</a>
</div>

Authoritativeness

Reference recognized external sources:

<!-- In-text citation example -->
<p>According to the
  <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html">
    CDC's 2023 National Diabetes Statistics Report
  </a>, 37.3 million Americans have diabetes.
</p>

Trustworthiness

Make the page's basis verifiable:

<!-- Medical page footer -->
<footer class="content-trust">
  <p><strong>Reviewed by:</strong> Dr. James Park, MD, Endocrinologist</p>
  <p><strong>Last reviewed:</strong> January 2025</p>
  <p><strong>Sources:</strong> <a href="#references">View references</a></p>
</footer>

Why It Matters

Google's Quality Rater Guidelines require YMYL pages to meet higher E-E-A-T standards than general content — a YMYL page without visible expertise and trust signals will be rated low quality regardless of technical SEO. Google's explanation of what E-E-A-T means in practice (opens in new tab) is useful here because it turns abstract quality language into visible page requirements.

YMYL Topic Categories

Per Google's Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG):

❌ YMYL Pages That Fail Quality Standards

<!-- Medical article with no author attribution -->
<article>
  <h1>How to Treat Type 2 Diabetes at Home</h1>
  <!-- No author name, no credentials, no review date -->
  <p>You can manage diabetes by eating less sugar...</p>
  <!-- No citations, no sources, no expert review -->
</article>

This would be rated low quality by a Quality Rater regardless of technical SEO, and in most real audits it also coincides with missing disclaimers or weak editorial review.

YMYL Content Checklist

• Named author with relevant credentials displayed prominently
• Author bio page describing qualifications, experience, institutional affiliations
• "Reviewed by" credit if the author is not the subject-matter expert
• Last-reviewed or last-updated date visible on the page
• In-text citations to primary sources (government data, peer-reviewed studies, official guidelines)
• References/sources section at the bottom
• Clear editorial policy (link to it from YMYL pages)
• No misleading, exaggerated, or dangerous claims

Schema for Author Credentials

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "MedicalWebPage",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Dr. Sarah Chen",
    "honorificSuffix": "MD",
    "medicalSpecialty": "Endocrinology",
    "url": "https://example.com/about/dr-sarah-chen"
  },
  "reviewedBy": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Dr. James Park"
  },
  "dateModified": "2025-01-15"
}
</script>

Exceptions

• Necessary utility or compliance pages can be intentionally brief and should not be judged by the same editorial-depth expectations as ranking-focused content.
• AI-assisted drafting is not a failure by itself; flag unsupported claims, missing editorial review, or low-originality output instead.
• When a page has both trust-signal issues and crawl/index problems, make the page eligible to rank first and then improve the content quality signals.

Standards

• Use these references as the standard for the final search-facing HTML, metadata, and crawl behavior.
• Check the implementation against Google: Quality Rater Guidelines before treating the rule as satisfied.
• Check the implementation against Google: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content before treating the rule as satisfied.

Verification

Automated Checks

• Inspect rendered HTML and HTTP headers to confirm the expected metadata or crawlability signal is present.
• Test the affected URL with Google Search Console or equivalent tooling where relevant.
• Re-crawl a representative page set after deployment.

Manual Checks

• Confirm the change does not create conflicting canonical-url, robots, or structured-data signals.