Listen: E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google's rater guidelines use to judge whether content and its author can be relied on.
Transcript
When Google evaluates the quality of online content, it relies on a framework known as E-E-A-T. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
It is not a direct ranking score, but rather a guide that search systems and human raters use to judge whether a page and its author can be relied on. At the very center of this framework is trust, and the other three elements all feed into it.
To build that trust, content needs first-hand experience, meaning the creator has actually used the product or visited the place. It needs expertise, which is genuine subject knowledge. And it needs authoritativeness, which is a reputation as a go-to source. The bar is set even higher for topics involving health or money, where bad information can cause the most harm.
This framework is also crucial for artificial intelligence. AI systems look for the same signals of authority, demonstrated expertise, and corroboration when deciding which sources to trust and cite in their answers. By sharing original findings and first-hand experience, creators increase the unique value of their information, making their content much more likely to be retrieved and highlighted by AI.