SEO

What Is E-E-A-T?

Definition

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — Google's framework for evaluating content quality, particularly for health, finance, and legal topics.

Why It Matters

E-E-A-T is Google's quality standard for ranking content that could affect a person's wellbeing or finances. Pages covering medical, financial, or legal topics with low E-E-A-T signals are systematically downranked — regardless of technical SEO or backlink quality.

How It Works

Google's Search Quality Raters evaluate pages against E-E-A-T criteria. Experience means demonstrating first-hand knowledge of the subject. Expertise requires demonstrable credentials or track record. Authoritativeness is built through backlinks from authoritative sources and brand mentions. Trustworthiness encompasses accurate information, secure HTTPS, transparent authorship, and clear contact details.

Real-World Example

A financial advice blog publishes articles without author bios. After adding detailed bios with credentials, adding an AFSL licence number to the site footer, earning citations from finance publications, and adding sources to every claim, organic rankings for high-value money keywords improve significantly over six months.

Quick Facts

E-E-A-T (formerly E-A-T) added "Experience" after Google's December 2022 update
YMYL ("Your Money or Your Life") pages face the strictest E-E-A-T scrutiny
Author bylines with credentials significantly improve E-E-A-T signals for editorial content
E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking algorithm — it informs human quality rater guidelines that shape algorithm updates