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name: ymyl-detection description: "Use when applies to any site in health, medicine, finance, law, safety, news, or similar fields. Use when auditing content quality for sites in YMYL categories or investigating why high-quality-seeming content underperforms." metadata: category: seo priority: high difficulty: intermediate estimatedTime: "10" source: frontendchecklist.io url: https://frontendchecklist.io/rules/seo/ymyl-detection

Identify YMYL content on your site

Google's Quality Rater Guidelines require YMYL pages to meet higher E-E-A-T standards than general content — a YMYL page without visible expertise and trust signals will be rated low quality regardless of technical SEO.

Quick Reference

• YMYL pages cover topics where inaccurate information could harm a user's health, safety, finances, or wellbeing
• Google applies its highest quality standards to YMYL content — E-E-A-T must be demonstrably high
• YMYL pages must display author credentials, cite authoritative sources, and be reviewed by qualified experts
• Missing trust signals on YMYL pages can cause poor manual quality ratings that suppress rankings

Check

Identify pages covering medical, financial, legal, safety, or civic topics. For each YMYL page, check: Does it display author name and credentials? Is the author qualified in the topic area? Are claims supported by cited, authoritative sources? Was the content reviewed by a relevant expert? When was it last updated?

Fix

Add author bylines with credentials to YMYL pages. Link author names to bio pages that describe their qualifications. Add citations to primary sources (peer-reviewed research, government data, official guidelines). Add a 'reviewed by' note with the reviewer's credentials. Update outdated YMYL content with a visible last-reviewed date.

Explain

Explain what YMYL content is, why Google applies stricter quality standards to it, how Quality Raters assess E-E-A-T on YMYL pages, and what steps content teams should take to meet those standards.

Code Review

Review metadata generation, rendered HTML, structured data, and response headers related to Identify YMYL content on your site. Flag exact routes or templates where search-facing output violates the rule, and describe how to verify the final page output.

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For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance, see references/rule.md.

Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/rules/seo/ymyl-detection