E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the four qualities Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines ask human reviewers to assess when judging whether a page and its author are credible.
Also known as: E-A-T, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
E-E-A-T comes from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the document Google gives to the human contractors who evaluate search results. It asks raters to judge a page and its creator on four things: Experience (has the author actually done this), Expertise (do they know the subject), Authoritativeness (are they recognized for it), and Trustworthiness (is the page accurate, honest, and safe). The first E, Experience, was added in December 2022 to the older E-A-T.
One thing to be clear about: E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor in the sense of a score Google computes for your page. Google has said so. Raters use it to judge whether ranking systems are producing good results, and Google adjusts its systems based on that feedback. The framework describes what Google wants its algorithms to reward, not a lever you pull. Anyone selling you an E-E-A-T score is selling an interpretation.
That said, the qualities it names are real and legible on a page. A plumber's site that shows the license number, names the owner, describes twenty years of local work, includes photos of actual jobs, and lists a physical address reads as more credible than one with stock photos and a contact form. A law firm page written by the attorney who handles those cases, with their bar admission stated, reads differently from anonymous copy. Those signals are what E-E-A-T is trying to describe.
For AI answers, nobody has measured whether engines evaluate anything like E-E-A-T, and it would be a stretch to claim they do. What's observable is that answer engines lean on sources they can verify: consistent facts, real reviews, named people, specific claims. Yext found 86% of AI citations in its 6.8 million citation sample came from brand-managed sources, owned sites and managed listings, which are exactly the places a business demonstrates who it is. The overlap between what makes a page credible to a human rater and what makes it a usable source for a model is large, even if the mechanism is different.
For a small business, treat E-E-A-T as a writing checklist rather than a metric. Say who you are. State your license, your years in business, your service area, your specialties. Show real work. Keep facts consistent with your listings. Reply to reviews. That's the substance behind the acronym, and it's the same substance that gives an AI engine something specific and verifiable to say about you.
Keep exploring the glossary
- Topical AuthorityTopical authority is the depth and consistency with which a website covers one subject, shown by many specific, accurate pages on related questions, so search engines and AI systems treat the site as a reliable source for the whole topic.
- Review SignalsReview signals are the count, rating, recency, and written content of customer reviews on Google, Yelp, and industry directories that search engines and AI answer engines read as evidence of a business's quality when deciding how to recommend it.
- EntityAn entity is a distinct, uniquely identifiable thing such as a business, person, or place that search engines and AI systems recognize as a single node with attributes, so Smith Plumbing in Dayton is one entity however it's written online.
- Citation (AI answer)In an AI answer, a citation is a source the engine references or links to while generating its response, and the number of sources cited per answer varies widely by engine, from about 2.5 for Copilot up to about 7.7 for Google AI Overviews.
Common questions about E-E-A-T
- Is E-E-A-T a Google ranking factor?
- Not directly. Google has stated E-E-A-T is a framework for its human quality raters, whose judgments help Google evaluate and tune ranking systems. There's no E-E-A-T score attached to your page. The qualities it describes are still worth demonstrating, because they're what Google's systems are being tuned to reward.
- Does E-E-A-T matter for ChatGPT or Perplexity?
- Nobody has measured it, and the engines don't use Google's rater guidelines. What's consistent with how they work is that they favor sources with verifiable, specific facts. The practical advice overlaps almost entirely: name yourself, state credentials, show real work, keep facts consistent.