Definition
YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life: topics where bad information could significantly harm people's health, financial stability or safety, or the welfare of society. The term comes from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, section 2.3 in the version dated 11 September 2025.
Example. "How to invest money" and "symptoms of a heart attack" are the guidelines' own YMYL examples. "Shopping for pencils" is their example of a topic that is not.
You can rate your own page the way a Google quality rater would, including the extra checks a YMYL page gets, with the free Google Quality Rater skill.
Is YMYL a ranking factor?
YMYL is not a ranking factor. It is a classification that Google's search quality raters use, and Google says raters have no control over how pages rank and that rater data is not used directly in its ranking algorithms. Ratings are feedback on whether Google's systems seem to be working.
The connection to ranking runs through E-E-A-T. Google says E-E-A-T itself is not a specific ranking factor, but that its systems give extra weight to content with strong E-E-A-T on topics that could significantly affect health, financial stability or safety. The E-E-A-T guide covers that side.
Which topics count as YMYL?
A topic counts as YMYL when the topic itself could cause one of four kinds of harm, as the rater guidelines set them out.
| Type of harm | What the guidelines cover |
|---|---|
| Health or safety | Mental, physical and emotional health, and any form of safety, including safety online |
| Financial security | A person's ability to support themselves and their families |
| Government, civics and society | Public institutions, election and voting information, and issues of public interest |
| Other | Anything else that could hurt people or the welfare of society |
Is every topic a little bit YMYL?
Not every topic is YMYL. The guidelines say that many or most topics are not, and describe YMYL as a spectrum running from clear YMYL to definitely not. A topic does not become YMYL because someone could imagine a harmful page about it. Only a topic that carries the risk itself qualifies.
What changes on a YMYL page?
A YMYL page is held to a higher standard of accuracy and trust, and raters scrutinise it hardest. The clearest line in the guidelines: a complete lack of information about who is responsible for a YMYL page is listed among the reasons for the Lowest rating. On these topics, naming an accountable author is part of the content.
Sources
- Google: Search Quality Rater Guidelines, section 2.3 (11 September 2025)
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Last checked against these sources on 19 October 2026.