What is YMYL?
YMYL stands for “your money or your life.” It’s the term Google uses for websites or content that could genuinely affect someone’s wellbeing, quality of life, financial stability, or safety. This kind of content has real power to shape major decisions people make about their lives or finances, which is exactly why Google holds YMYL pages to such high quality standards.
What counts as YMYL content?
It’s not always crystal clear what falls under YMYL, since it isn’t confined to one type of content. Pages that typically count include:
- News and current affairs websites
- Websites offering legal advice or services
- Government websites
- Websites offering financial advice or services
- Online shopping
- Medical and health-related websites
- Websites that offer safety or first-aid information
- Information for groups, such as religious groups
How does Google Rank YMYL content?
Google ranks YMYL content differently from everything else. Given its potential to genuinely affect someone’s life, Google’s algorithm puts extra weight on the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of a source, often shortened to E-A-T.
Expertise
Google’s algorithm prioritises YMYL content created by genuine experts, favouring sites that show credentials or other clear proof of the creator’s knowledge.
Authoritativeness
Google also weighs whether the content comes from an individual or brand widely recognised as authoritative on the topic, government sites and well-known organisations often fall into this category.
Trustworthiness
Content that’s reliable, current, and factually sound gets prioritised in Google’s ranking.
What does YMYL mean for SEO?
Google loves high-quality content. Publishing regular, genuinely informative content and applying solid SEO tactics, keywords included, is essential for ranking well in search results.
But Google holds YMYL content to even stricter standards, which makes cracking the top of search results that much harder.
What can you do about it?
To keep YMYL from holding back your search engine results, try the following:
- First, work out whether your website counts as YMYL content
- Make sure your content is factually accurate and kept up to date
- Have content written by people genuinely considered experts in the field
- Credit every contributor with an author name and a byline describing their expertise on the topic
- Back up your claims with real data and statistics
- Avoid giving advice on topics you’re not genuinely knowledgeable about, especially in health, finance, and law
