SEO basics

What is E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust)?

Updated on November 6, 2026

E-E-A-T is the grid Google's human quality raters use to judge whether a page and its author deserve trust: first-hand experience, expertise, authority in the field, and trustworthiness. It is a guideline, not a ranking score.

Google published the four criteria in its quality rater guidelines (the second E, experience, was added in December 2022). Raters do not rank pages; their judgements help Google check that its algorithms promote pages that show who wrote them, why they can be believed, and whether the claims hold up. The signals that approximate this are visible: a named author with a biography, an about page, references, contact details, consistent reviews.

For a service business, E-E-A-T is mostly a matter of showing the work: client cases with names and figures, the people behind the agency, verifiable facts. The same pages are the ones AI assistants prefer to cite, because they can attribute a statement to someone.

Frequently asked questions

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

Not as a score. Google says it has no E-E-A-T metric; it uses many signals that correlate with trust. Improving E-E-A-T means improving those signals: authorship, references, reputation.

How does a small agency show expertise?

With published client cases, a page per person with their background, an original guide or two that cite sources, and reviews collected through a verifiable process. Volume matters less than verifiability.

Related terms

Entity

In search, an entity is a thing the engine recognises as one object (a company, a person, a place, a product) with properties and relations, independently of the words used to name it.

Brand mention

A brand mention is the name of a company written in a page or in an AI answer without necessarily a link. Engines use mentions to understand what a brand is and how it is regarded.

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