| name | seo-google-guidelines |
| description | Ground-truth reference for what Google Search actually says — Search Essentials, spam policies, E-E-A-T/YMYL, Core Web Vitals thresholds, structured-data eligibility, algorithm-update awareness (core/helpful-content/spam) and how to react, plus a falsifiability methodology for SEO claims. Use when verifying an SEO claim against primary sources, diagnosing a ranking drop after an update, or deciding whether a practice is allowed. Triggers on: "is this allowed by Google", "Google guidelines", "Search Essentials", "spam policy", "E-E-A-T", "YMYL", "helpful content", "core update", "ranking drop", "manual action", "penalty recovery", "Core Web Vitals", "LCP INP CLS", "structured data eligibility", "rich results retired", "what does Google say".
|
| version | 1.0.0 |
Google Search Guidelines (Ground Truth)
The canonical reference our other SEO skills cite. When a claim about "what works for
Google" is contested, this skill is the arbiter: it distills what Google publicly
states, separates confirmed facts from third-party speculation, and gives a method for
testing any SEO claim instead of trusting folklore.
Primary-source rule. Only Google-owned domains count as ground truth:
developers.google.com, web.dev, chrome.com, blog.google, support.google.com,
status.search.google.com. Anything reported only by third-party trackers is a
hypothesis, not a fact — label it as such and never encode it into an audit as if confirmed.
How Google Search Works
Three stages. A page must clear all three to rank:
- Crawling — Googlebot discovers URLs via links and sitemaps. Blocked by
robots.txt Disallow, network errors, or nofollow-only discovery.
- Indexing — Google processes content, signals, and canonicals, then stores the page. Blocked by
noindex, soft-404s, duplicate-canonical selection, or content Google can't render.
- Serving — At query time, algorithms rank indexed pages by relevance, quality, and usability.
Mobile-first indexing is 100% complete (since 2024). Google crawls and indexes
exclusively with the mobile Googlebot user-agent. If content/links/structured-data exist
only in the desktop render, Google does not see them.
Search Essentials (the only hard requirements)
Formerly "Webmaster Guidelines." Three buckets:
Technical requirements — the floor to be eligible at all:
- Reachable by Googlebot (not blocked by
robots.txt/noindex).
- Returns HTTP 200 for indexable content.
- Content in a processable format (HTML preferred; JS-rendered content is supported but slower and riskier — verify the rendered DOM, not just source).
- Served over HTTPS.
Spam policies — violating any of these risks demotion or a manual action:
cloaking (different content to Googlebot vs users) · doorway pages · hidden text/links ·
keyword stuffing · link spam (buying/selling links, excessive exchanges) · scraped or
scaled auto-generated content without added value · sneaky redirects · thin affiliate pages ·
site reputation abuse (third-party content riding a host's authority — "parasite SEO") ·
expired-domain abuse.
Key best practices (signals, not pass/fail rules): write for users not engines · clear
crawlable hierarchy · unique descriptive <title> + meta description per page · logical
H1–H6 structure · alt text + right-sized images · responsive mobile design · fast pages
(Core Web Vitals) · submit an XML sitemap · use JSON-LD structured data for content Google should understand.
E-E-A-T and YMYL
E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor — it is the lens the Quality Rater Guidelines
(QRG) use to describe what "high quality" means; the algorithm approximates it via many signals.
| Signal | What Google looks for | How to show it (Next.js) |
|---|
| Experience | First-hand use of the topic | Original photos, named author who used the product, dated changelog |
| Expertise | Relevant knowledge/credentials | Author bio + Person schema, accurate sourcing, technical depth |
| Authoritativeness | Recognized go-to source | Citations, brand mentions, Organization/sameAs links |
| Trustworthiness | Reliable, transparent (the most important of the four) | Contact page, HTTPS, editorial policy, accurate claims, visible publish/update dates |
- YMYL ("Your Money or Your Life": health, finance, safety, legal, and — per the Sept 2025 QRG — major political/social topics) is held to the strictest quality bar; inaccurate YMYL content can cause real harm.
- Per the Dec 2025 core update, E-E-A-T-style assessment now applies to all competitive queries, not only YMYL. Treat trust signals as table stakes everywhere.
Practical: surface a real author entity and dates in the page graph.
import type { Article, WithContext } from "schema-dts";
export default async function Post({ params }: { params: Promise<{ slug: string }> }) {
const { slug } = await params;
const post = await getPost(slug);
const jsonLd: WithContext<Article> = {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
headline: post.title,
datePublished: post.publishedAt,
dateModified: post.updatedAt,
author: {
"@type": "Person",
name: post.author.name,
url: post.author.profileUrl,
},
};
return (
<article>
{/* visible byline + dates must match the schema — never mark up hidden content */}
<p>By {post.author.name} · Updated {new Date(post.updatedAt).toLocaleDateString()}</p>
<script type="application/ld+json"
dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify(jsonLd) }} />
</article>
);
}
Core Web Vitals (confirmed ranking signal since 2021)
Assessed at the 75th percentile of field data (real Chrome users via CrUX), not lab data.
| Metric | Good | Needs Improvement | Poor |
|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | ≤ 2.5s | 2.5s–4.0s | > 4.0s |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | ≤ 200ms | 200ms–500ms | > 500ms |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | ≤ 0.1 | 0.1–0.25 | > 0.25 |
- INP replaced FID (March 2024); FID was removed from all Chrome tooling (CrUX, PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse) in September 2024. Never reference FID.
- Field data (CrUX) beats lab data (Lighthouse). A green Lighthouse score with red CrUX means real users are still suffering — believe the field.
- Target = all three at "Good." A single "Poor" fails the page in Search Console's CWV report.
- Sources of measurement: PageSpeed Insights (field + lab), CrUX (field), Lighthouse (lab only), Search Console CWV report (field). Use your own crawler/tooling to collect lab data at scale.
For the Next.js implementation playbook (RSC, next/image, font strategy, dynamic imports), defer to seo-technical / seo-performance. This skill owns only the thresholds and the field-vs-lab rule.
Structured Data: eligibility, not decoration
- JSON-LD is Google's preferred format (over Microdata/RDFa). Place in
<script type="application/ld+json">.
- Always include
@context and @type. Required properties gate rich-result eligibility; recommended ones improve quality.
- Only mark up content visible on the page. Marking up hidden/misleading content is a spam-policy violation and can trigger a manual action.
- Keep schema in sync with content; validate with a rich-results validator before deploy.
Retired / restricted types — do not promise rich results for these:
| Type | Status |
|---|
HowTo | Rich results removed (2023) |
FAQPage | Rich results fully retired (2026) for all sites. Still useful as an entity/AI-citation signal; use QAPage for genuine single-question pages. |
SpecialAnnouncement | Deprecated (2025) |
Course Info, EstimatedSalary, LearningVideo, ClaimReview, VehicleListing | Retired (2025) |
When in doubt about a type's current support, check developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data rather than assuming. Deep schema patterns live in seo-schema.
Algorithm-update awareness
Two failure modes when rankings drop, and they have different remedies:
Manual actions (you get a notification)
Reported in Search Console → Manual actions. Fix the root cause, then submit a
reconsideration request. Common triggers and fixes:
| Trigger | Fix |
|---|
| Unnatural links | Remove/disavow the bad links, then reconsider |
| Thin content | Add substantial unique value |
| Cloaking / sneaky redirects | Remove deceptive serving |
| User-generated spam | Moderate UGC, nofollow/ugc user links |
| Structured-data spam | Remove misleading markup |
| Site reputation abuse | Remove/noindex the parasitic third-party section (Google has done section-level removals within hours) |
Algorithmic demotions (no notification — you infer it from a timeline)
Detected by correlating a traffic drop with a confirmed rollout window. No reconsideration
exists; you fix quality and wait for the next core update to reassess.
- Helpful Content System was merged into core ranking in March 2024 — it is no longer a standalone update. Helpfulness is now judged inside every core update. Low-value, unhelpful, or scaled AI content still gets demoted, just via core.
- Core updates = broad quality reassessment across all signals.
- Spam updates = automated detection of spam patterns.
- Link spam updates = devaluation of manipulative links.
Reacting to a suspected update hit — protocol
- Confirm a rollout actually happened. Check
status.search.google.com and the Search Central blog for an official window. No confirmed update = look for a technical or seasonal cause first.
- Align the timeline. Overlay your Search Console / analytics drop on the rollout dates. A drop outside the window is probably not the update.
- Segment the damage. Which URL groups, query clusters, or page types lost? A site-wide drop vs a section-specific drop point to different causes (quality-wide vs parasite/section).
- Classify the cause against the buckets above (manual vs algorithmic; quality vs links vs spam).
- Fix the root cause, not the symptom. Improving the specific weak pages beats sitewide cosmetic edits.
- Set expectations. Algorithmic recovery is gated on the next core update — often weeks to months. Do not promise a date.
Maintaining update awareness: keep a small, dated, source-cited log of confirmed updates
(date, name, kind ∈ core / spam / policy / QRG / schema / CWV / product, Google-owned source
URL, one-line impact). Promote a third-party-reported update into your confirmed log only
after a Google-owned source verifies it. Recent confirmed rollouts illustrate the cadence:
roughly three core updates per year (e.g., core updates landed in Mar, Jun, Dec 2025 and
Mar, May 2026), interleaved with spam updates and periodic QRG revisions.
Falsifiability methodology (claude-seo's core value)
SEO is saturated with untestable folklore. Before acting on any claim — yours, a client's, or a blog's — run it through this filter.
1. Source tier. Is the claim backed by a Google-owned URL (fact), an experiment with data (evidence), or an assertion (folklore)? Downgrade folklore to "hypothesis."
2. State the falsifier. A claim you can't disprove is worthless. For every recommendation, answer:
"How would we know this failed?"
Name the concrete observation that would prove the claim wrong.
3. Define the leading indicator. Rankings are a lagging, noisy signal. Pick something that moves first so you learn before months pass.
| Claim | Falsifier ("how would we know it failed?") | Leading indicator (moves first) |
|---|
| "Adding FAQ schema brings rich results" | No FAQ rich result appears (it can't — retired in 2026) | Rich-results validator shows eligible:false |
| "Fixing LCP will lift rankings" | LCP improves to Good but CTR/position flat after a full reassessment | CrUX p75 LCP crosses 2.5s in field data |
| "This page is thin, so it's demoted" | Page recovers after a core update without content changes | Avg position / impressions for its query cluster in Search Console |
| "Our drop was the May 2026 core update" | The drop started outside the confirmed rollout window | Date-aligned overlay of GSC clicks vs the official window |
| "More pages = more traffic" | New pages get crawled but stay unindexed or get zero impressions | Indexed-count and impressions per new URL group (vs crawl-only) |
4. Prefer the smallest reversible test. Change one variable on a representative URL set, define the metric and the window before shipping, then measure. If you can't define the metric, you can't claim success.
5. Attribute honestly. Correlation with a rollout is not proof of causation. State confidence ("consistent with", not "caused by") unless a Google-owned source or a controlled test backs it.
When other skills should cite this one
seo-audit / seo-technical / seo-performance → CWV thresholds, field-vs-lab rule, mobile-first fact.seo-schema → structured-data eligibility and retired types.seo-content / ai-seo / seo-geo → E-E-A-T/YMYL framing, helpful-content-is-now-core, AI-content spam stance.- Any "we got hit by an update" investigation → the reacting-to-an-update protocol and falsifiability filter.
Verification links (Google-owned only)
- Search Essentials —
developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
- How Search works —
developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works
- Spam policies —
developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
- Creating helpful content (E-E-A-T) —
developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
- Structured data overview —
developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data
- Ranking update history —
developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking-update-history
- Search status dashboard (live incidents) —
status.search.google.com
- Search Central blog —
developers.google.com/search/blog
- Manual actions report help —
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175
- Core Web Vitals (web.dev) —
web.dev/articles/vitals
Parts adapted from claude-seo (MIT, © 2026 agricidaniel).
