AI Summary: Google describes E-E-A-T as experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Make these signals inspectable with accurate authorship, relevant first-hand evidence, source links, transparent methods, and useful content; E-E-A-T is not a schema type or a guarantee of ranking or AI citation.
Experience means relevant first-hand knowledge when the topic calls for it. Expertise means getting the subject right and explaining it clearly. Authority can come from a credible author, organization, or source context. Trust follows from accurate claims, clear ownership, honest limits, and a page that behaves as promised.
Make Who, How, and Why visible
Google recommends asking why it exists. [1] Give articles accurate bylines and useful author or organization context. Explain tests, sources, dates, and unknowns when the method affects trust. If AI assistance substantially shaped the piece, disclose it when readers would reasonably ask how it was made; still edit, attribute, and fact-check it.
The “why” should serve an audience, not capture a query. Google's people-first guidance warns against changing dates without substantial changes, writing to a preferred word count, or producing pages mainly to manipulate rankings. [1]
| Trust question | Evidence a reader can inspect |
|---|---|
| Who made it? | Accurate byline, owner, bio, and organization context |
| How was it made? | Method, sources, test scope, dates, and limitations |
| Why does it exist? | A clear reader goal and useful information |
| Is it current? | Meaningful update history, not a changed date alone |
| Is it honest? | Caveats, uncertainty, corrections, and no invented proof |
Verification checklist
Ask an independent reviewer to identify the author, source, method, date, and intended reader. Check for original analysis rather than source rewriting. Verify bylines, links, dates, and examples; remove unsupported claims and record corrections when evidence changes.
E-E-A-T is useful when people can inspect the work behind claims. It is a publishing discipline, not a machine-readable shortcut around quality.
References
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Google Search Central: E-E-A-T and the quality rater guidelines