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.

The data are 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 is the Information Satisfaction score, distilled from rater judgments. It is the calibration norm itself. siteQualityStddev is the standard deviation of quality across a site, a measure of 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 name Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust as rating dimensions.

The QRG (Quality Rater Guidelines) are publicly available and should be required reading for editorial and product teams. The goal is what a rater would judge as 'high quality' per the QRG, 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).