IS-Calibration (Rater/QRG)

Not a live signal used daily in ranking — but the foundation on which all quality models are calibrated. The IS-Score (Information Satisfaction) summarizes how well a page meets a user's information need, rated by trained human raters. The QRG (Quality Rater Guidelines) are the public rulebook by which these raters judge.

Judgments from trained human raters following the QRG — especially 'Needs Met' (does the page serve the search intent?) and 'Page Quality' (is the page itself high quality?). siteQualityStddev measures the consistency of quality across the whole site.

IS-Score = the Information Satisfaction score distilled from rater judgments (the calibration norm itself); siteQualityStddev = standard deviation of quality across a site (consistency). [A IS, B/C Stddev]

This norm defines what E-E-A-T means — it is the source, not a player. All four dimensions are fully affected because the QRG explicitly names Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust as rating dimensions.

The QRG are publicly available and should be required reading for editorial and product teams. What a rater would judge as 'high quality' per the QRG is the goal — not what tools measure as 'optimized'. The QRG distinguish strictly between 'Page Quality' (the quality of the page itself) and 'Needs Met' (does the page match the search query).