E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It comes from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the handbook human raters use to evaluate search results. Raters do not change rankings directly. Their feedback helps Google check whether its systems reward the kind of pages people actually find reliable. Google's guidance names trust as the most important of the four, with the other three supporting it.
The same qualities matter for AI assistants. When ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews choose which sources to cite, they favour pages that are specific, consistent with other sources and clearly attributed. A page that shows who wrote it, what they did and how to verify it is easier to quote with confidence.
1. Show experience, not just knowledge
Experience was added to the framework in late 2022 because first-hand use is hard to fake. A roofer who writes "we replaced 140 flat roofs in Halifax last year, and these are the three failures we saw most" offers something a generic article cannot. Add these to your important pages:
- Original photos and video of your own work, team and premises, not stock images.
- Specific numbers from your own jobs: timelines, quantities, before and after measurements.
- What went wrong and what you learned, not only what went right.
- Process detail that only someone who has done the work would know.
Short video is one of the most efficient ways to show experience at scale. Our guide on filming better video on your phone makes it practical for any team.
2. Name real authors and reviewers
Give every article and guide a visible byline with a real person's name, role and a link to an author page. On that author page, explain their relevant background, years in the field, certifications, and links to their professional profiles. For topics where mistakes affect health, money or safety, add a "reviewed by" line from a qualified professional and the date of review.
Avoid inventing personas or inflating credentials. A short, honest bio from the actual owner or technician is more convincing than a fabricated expert, and it holds up when someone checks.
3. Make your business easy to verify
Trust starts with basics that are surprisingly often missing. Check that your site has:
- A clear About page that names the owners or leadership, when the business started and where it operates.
- Full contact details: phone, email, address or service area, and business hours.
- Licence, registration or insurance details where your industry requires them.
- Plain language policies for pricing, refunds, warranties and privacy.
- Matching business details on your Google Business Profile, social profiles and directories, as covered in our local citations guide.
4. Prove results with evidence a stranger can check
Claims like "trusted by hundreds" do little. Specific, attributed proof does a lot. Publish case studies that name the client (with permission), describe the starting point, explain what you did and show the measured outcome with dates. Link to reviews on third party platforms instead of only quoting them on your own site. If you cite statistics, link the original source and note the year. Our case studies page shows the format we use for our own results.
5. Earn mentions from sources others already trust
Authoritativeness is largely about what others say about you. Useful signals include coverage in local news, membership in industry associations, speaking at events, partnerships with recognized organizations and links from relevant sites. These cannot be manufactured on your own site, but you can earn them deliberately: publish original data, offer expert comment to journalists, and sponsor local initiatives that fit your work. The backlinks guide covers tactics that still work.
Brand mentions matter for AI assistants too. A business that is described consistently across reputable sites is easier for a language model to describe accurately and to recommend.
6. Answer the "who, how and why" questions on each page
Google's helpful content guidance suggests asking three questions of any page. Who created it, and is that obvious? How was it created, for example through testing, field work or automation, and would a reader benefit from knowing? Why does it exist, primarily to help people or primarily to attract search traffic? If AI tools helped draft a page, the honest answer is a human expert who checked, edited and stands behind it.
7. Keep content accurate and dated
Show a published date and a last updated date on articles, and actually update them when prices, rules or platforms change. Remove or rewrite advice that is no longer true. Outdated pages quietly erode trust in the rest of the site, and they are exactly the kind of source an AI assistant can misquote. Schedule a quarterly review of your highest traffic pages.
8. Support it with structured data
Structured data does not create trust, but it helps systems connect the signals you already show. Use Article markup with an author that links to a Person entity, Organization markup with your logo and official profiles in sameAs, and LocalBusiness markup with accurate contact details. Our schema markup guide walks through each one.
A quick E-E-A-T audit for one page
- Is the author named, with a bio and relevant experience?
- Does the page include anything only your business could have produced, such as original photos, data or examples?
- Are claims supported by linked sources or verifiable proof?
- Can a visitor find who runs the business and how to contact them within one click?
- Is the content dated and still accurate?
Run those five questions on your top ten pages first. Fixing the gaps there usually does more than publishing ten new posts.
Sources and further reading
Read Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content and the full Search Quality Rater Guidelines for the detailed definitions.
Frequently asked questions
Is E-E-A-T a Google ranking factor?
Not as a single score. E-E-A-T describes what Google's quality raters look for, and Google uses a mix of signals that align with it. Improving experience, expertise, authority and trust tends to improve rankings indirectly because it makes pages more useful and more cited.
Which part of E-E-A-T matters most?
Trust. Google's rater guidelines describe trustworthiness as the most important member of the family, with experience, expertise and authoritativeness all contributing to it.
Do small businesses need author pages?
Yes, if you publish guides or advice. A short author page with the real person's name, role, experience and professional profiles is easy to create and makes your content easier for both readers and search systems to trust.
Can AI-written content have good E-E-A-T?
It can if a qualified person reviews it, adds first-hand experience and evidence, and takes responsibility for its accuracy. Unedited AI text with no original insight and no accountable author usually lacks the experience and trust signals that matter.
Does E-E-A-T affect visibility in AI assistants?
The same qualities help. AI systems tend to cite sources that are specific, consistent with other reputable sources and clearly attributed, which is what strong E-E-A-T looks like in practice.