E-E-A-T(E-E-A-T)

Long definition

E-E-A-T is not an algorithm or a score — it's a framework in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines (the document Google publishes for its human evaluators). Raters use it to judge whether specific pages and sites should rank for their target queries. Their judgments become training data for the ranking algorithms, so E-E-A-T indirectly drives what ranks.

The four letters:

• Experience (E, added 2022) — has the author actually used/done the thing they're writing about? Review of a product by someone who owns it > review by someone summarizing reviews.
• Expertise (E) — does the author have the domain knowledge? Credentials, track record, depth of engagement.
• Authoritativeness (A) — is the site/author widely cited as a source in the field? Backlinks, mentions, expert recognition.
• Trustworthiness (T) — is the content accurate, honest, transparent? Citations, clear sourcing, correct attribution, secure site (HTTPS), working contact info.

Of the four, Trust is the foundation — Google's guidelines are explicit: "Untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert, or Authoritative they may seem."

YMYL — "Your Money or Your Life" — is the class of queries where low quality can hurt users (health, finance, legal, safety, child safety). Google weights E-E-A-T more heavily for YMYL. A personal anecdote about diabetes isn't authoritative enough; a blog post by an endocrinologist with citations is.

Concrete signals that correlate with E-E-A-T (not proven causal, but consistent):

• Bylines with actual author pages linking to credentials and other work
• Author schema markup (Person with sameAs linking to Wikipedia, LinkedIn, institutional profiles)
• External citations and mentions
• Working contact / about / editorial-policy pages
• Consistent factual accuracy over time
• No deceptive patterns (fake reviews, misleading claims)

Common misconceptions

• "E-E-A-T is a ranking factor." It's a concept that informs ranking factors. Google has been explicit: E-E-A-T is the quality bar raters evaluate against, not a computed score the algorithm reads. Signals that correlate with E-E-A-T (backlinks, citations, author profiles) are what the algorithm sees.
• "Adding an author bio fixes E-E-A-T." It helps. But if the author has no traceable expertise elsewhere (no other publications, no credentials, no cross-site presence), the bio alone does little. E-E-A-T is built over time, not bolted on.
• "E-E-A-T only matters for YMYL." It matters everywhere, just with different weight. For a cooking blog, "Experience" (you actually cooked the recipe) > medical "Authoritativeness." Always match which of the four letters is most load-bearing for your vertical.
• "I can show E-E-A-T with schema alone." Schema (Person, Organization, sameAs) is a signaling mechanism — it helps Google connect dots it already has. If the underlying reputation isn't there, schema doesn't manufacture it.