Joshua Franklin Wiedeman

E-E-A-T Signals

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. It is not a single ranking factor. It describes the qualities Google’s systems try to reward, and it matters most for “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics such as health, finance, and law.

How it works

Google uses human quality raters to evaluate search results against its guidelines. Their ratings help Google test its ranking systems; they do not change rankings directly. The four parts are:

  • Experience: the author has first-hand experience with the topic.
  • Expertise: the author has the knowledge or credentials to cover it.
  • Authoritativeness: others recognize the author or site as a go-to source.
  • Trustworthiness: the content is accurate, honest, and safe. Google calls this the most important part.

Your job is to make these qualities visible on the page rather than assume they will be inferred.

How to do it

  1. Add a named author to every article. Link the byline to a bio page that lists relevant credentials, experience, and other published work.
  2. Add Person and Article structured data that connects the author to the content.
  3. For YMYL topics, use authors or reviewers with verifiable credentials. Show “Reviewed by [name, credential]” when an expert checks the content.
  4. Show first-hand experience: original photos, screenshots, test results, and specific details only someone who did the work would know.
  5. Earn mentions from other credible sites through guest articles, interviews, podcasts, and talks. List genuine press mentions and certifications on your site.
  6. Build trust pages: an About page with real people, contact details, a privacy policy, terms, and an editorial or corrections policy where relevant. Serve the site over HTTPS.
  7. Link to primary sources for every statistic and claim.

What to measure

  • Author coverage: share of published pages with a named author linked to a bio page.
  • External mentions: number of credible third-party sites citing your brand or authors each quarter.
  • Trust checklist score: percentage of a fixed checklist (About page, contact info, policies, bios, sources, HTTPS) present on the site.

Best practices

  • Start with YMYL pages, where the standards are strictest.
  • Have experts review content and credit them on the page.
  • Add bylines, sources, and experience details to existing pages, not just new ones.

Common pitfalls

  • Inventing credentials or experience. Claims that cannot be verified damage trust with readers and raters.
  • Ignoring product, pricing, and support pages. Trust applies to the whole site, not only the blog.
  • Treating E-E-A-T as a one-time task. Reputation builds through steady, accurate publishing over time.