herein lies a quick and dirty explanation of what ymyl is…
YMYL defined (updated 11/07/2019)
There are a myriad of SEO acronyms that you need to keep track of. One that is ultra important to learn and know is “YMYL”. “Your Money, Your Life”. But be sure to understand that this is not exclusively meant for just those websites that are relevant to money matters. Let me help you understand it better. What this means in a nutshell is that this is a very specific category of website that falls under very careful and specific scrutiny of value as rated by Google. These are the specific types of pages that must follow a very specific set of guidelines in order to be rated as “valuable content”. You can read more on this in the Google “search quality evaluator guidelines”. Taken straight from the guidelines from Google itself:
2.3 Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Pages
Some types of pages or topics could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. We call such pages “Your Money or Your Life” pages, or YMYL. The following are examples of YMYL topics:
- News and current events: news about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science,
technology, etc. Keep in mind that not all news articles are necessarily considered YMYL (e.g., sports,
entertainment, and everyday lifestyle topics are generally not YMYL). Please use your judgment and knowledge
of your locale. - Civics, government, and law: information important to maintaining an informed citizenry, such as information
about voting, government agencies, public institutions, social services, and legal issues (e.g., divorce, child
custody, adoption, creating a will, etc.). - Finance: financial advice or information regarding investments, taxes, retirement planning, loans, banking, or
insurance, particularly webpages that allow people to make purchases or transfer money online. - Shopping: information about or services related to research or purchase of goods/services, particularly
webpages that allow people to make purchases online. - Health and safety: advice or information about medical issues, drugs, hospitals, emergency preparedness, how
dangerous an activity is, etc. - Groups of people: information about or claims related to groups of people, including but not limited to those
grouped on the basis of race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation,
gender or gender identity. - Other: there are many other topics related to big decisions or important aspects of people’s lives which thus may
be considered YMYL, such as fitness and nutrition, housing information, choosing a college, finding a job, etc.
Please use your judgment.
Google further emphasizes the importance of this categorization of highly scrutinized websites by saying “We have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.”
For more in-depth deeper dive of information, check out what SEMRush says about YMYL.
