E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. It comes from the guidelines Google writes for its human quality raters. It is not a directly measured ranking signal — but it explains the logic behind many signals Google does measure.
Let us keep it concrete: each letter has a physical equivalent on your page.
Experience: have you actually done this?
Added in 2022, this is the easiest place to differentiate. If you genuinely used a product or applied a method, show it.
- Use photographs you took yourself, not stock images
- Share your own data: "across 47 client projects, the average we measured was…"
- Write about what did not work; content that only reports success reads as inexperienced
Expertise: who wrote this?
There must be a human behind the content, and that human must be visible.
- A real author name and a one-line credential on every post
- An author page: background, work, contact
- Say the same thing to machines with
PersonandArticle.authorstructured data
Authoritativeness: do others cite you?
Authority does not come from you, it comes from outside. Publications, associations and competitors in your field referencing you is authority. Backlinks are only one form of it; unlinked brand mentions count too.
Trust: the heaviest letter
Google’s own guidelines place Trust at the centre. It is also the most neglected area on commercial sites.
- Clear contact details: address, phone, email
- Company information, registration and tax identifiers
- Refund, cancellation and privacy policies — real ones, written to be read
- Security indicators on checkout pages
- HTTPS, a valid certificate, no broken links
The bar is higher on YMYL pages
Health, finance, legal and safety topics fall under "Your Money or Your Life". There, citing sources, evidencing author credentials and dating your content are not optional.
Where to start
Run an audit and ask four questions: Who wrote this page, and can the reader see that? Are our claims sourced? Does the site prove our company is real? When was this content last updated?
If those four answers are weak, no amount of technical optimisation will close the gap.