What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It is the framework in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines for judging whether content is reliable. Google added the first “E”, for experience, in December 2022. Of the four, Google says trust is the most important.

What does each letter mean?

• Experience: first-hand experience of the topic, such as having used the product or visited the place.
• Expertise: the knowledge or skill the topic needs.
• Authoritativeness: being a go-to source for the topic, recognized by others.
• Trustworthiness: being accurate, honest, safe and reliable. The others support it.

Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?

Not directly. Human quality raters use it to grade search results, and Google uses those grades to evaluate its ranking systems, not to rank individual sites. Google says its systems use a mix of signals that align with E-E-A-T. It matters most for “Your Money or Your Life” topics, such as health, finance and safety, where bad information can cause real harm.

How do you show E-E-A-T?

• Show who wrote the content and why they know the subject, with a byline that leads to more detail.
• Include proof of first-hand experience: original photos, test results, real numbers.
• Cite sources for facts, and keep pages accurate and dated.
• Make it easy to see who runs the site and how to contact them.

Example

Two reviews of the same camping stove: one rewrites the maker’s spec sheet; the other shows photos from a weekend trip, boil times measured at altitude, and what broke. The second shows experience, and it is the kind of page Google’s guidance describes as helpful.

Related: helpful content, entity SEO.