YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)
YMYL describes any content that can materially affect a person's health, finances, safety or wellbeing. Google holds these pages to a higher evidence and authorship standard, and applies its quality systems far more conservatively to the topics that they cover.
Why it matters for your rankings
YMYL is why a medical or financial site needs credentials that a recipe site does not. Google's raters are explicitly instructed to demand higher expertise and trust on subjects where bad advice causes real harm.
The practical effect is that anonymous or thinly credentialed content struggles in these categories regardless of writing quality. It also means core updates hit YMYL sites harder, since these are exactly the topics where Google adjusts most cautiously. Many businesses do not realise they are in scope: legal services, insurance, employment advice, safety information and anything touching major purchases all qualify, not just medicine and investing.
How to check it on your site
Determine whether you are in scope
Anything affecting health, money, safety, legal standing or major life decisions is YMYL.
Add verifiable authorship
Named authors with real credentials, linked bios and external profiles that corroborate them.
Cite primary sources
Link claims to original research, regulators or official guidance rather than to secondary blogs.
Show review and update dates
Medical and financial content should show when it was last reviewed and by whom.