YMYL, short for "Your Money or Your Life", is a term from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines for topics where bad information could significantly harm a person's health, financial stability or safety, or the welfare of society. Pages on these topics are held to the highest standard of quality, because a wrong answer costs more than a wasted click.
Which topics count
The guidelines describe YMYL topics in a few groups:
- Health and safety: medical conditions, medication, mental health, emergencies and dangerous activities.
- Financial security: investing, taxes, loans, insurance and retirement.
- Government, civics and society: elections, public institutions and information that affects groups of people.
- Other: topics that could hurt people or harm the well-being of society, even when they fit none of the groups above.
Not every page that mentions money or health is YMYL. A review of running shoes is not, while advice on running with a heart condition is. The test is how much harm inaccurate information could do.
YMYL and E-E-A-T
Google's raters assess pages for E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Trust is the most important part of E-E-A-T, and YMYL topics demand the most of it. Medical advice should come from qualified sources, financial advice should be accurate and current, and the people and organization behind a page should be easy to identify. Pages that fall short on a YMYL topic are rated as low quality even if they are well written.
Is it a ranking factor?
Not directly. Quality raters do not change rankings. Their ratings help Google evaluate whether changes to its algorithms produce better results. But the algorithms are built to reward what the guidelines describe, which is why sites in health, finance and law are often among those most affected by core updates. For these sites, visible authorship, sources, review by qualified people and accurate, up-to-date content are not extras. They are the price of being shown at all.