What Exactly Is A Google E-E-A-T Score?

The concept of Google E-A-T was a commonly understood guideline for many digital marketers over the course of the field’s history, initially distributed by the search engine as a set of criteria guiding high quality content. In 2022, Google announced an update for this term as E-E-A-T, with an extra E – representing Experience, or demonstrable engagement with a particular product or concept in question. 

With this update, Google is aiming to equip its algorithm to better consider the nuances of user searches – at times, even high quality and authoritative sites won’t deliver the right content that a user seeks. The notion of ‘experience’, in other words, is a metric that aims to address the subjective perspective of a particular subject matter, where authoritativeness and expertise can’t compensate. In order to achieve this, they updated a set of publicly available rules, called the ‘Search Rater Guidelines’, to help them measure the quality, originality, and helpfulness of a website’s main content (MC).

What Is Google E-E-A-T?  

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust.  According to Google, E-E-A-T is considered one of the ‘most important factors’ when considering the overall Page Quality Rating of a website’s MC.  

Experience: first-hand or life experience with the topic

The creator of the content should optimise their content with aspects of subjective and personal embellishments to their content. Many types of pages are regarded as trustworthy, when conveying a more accurate depiction of a given experience – things like theoretical knowledge, or second-hand accounts won’t be able to deliver the same level of vividness or clarity in detail. 

Expertise: expert skill or knowledge in a particular field.  

This means the content creator should be an expert in the given domain.  This is particularly important for those creating content on topics such as medical, financial or legal advice, and is governed by Google’s ‘Your Money or Your Life’ (YMYL) guideline as a policy designed to safeguard user livelihood via reliable information.    

Authority: the power or right to give orders and make decisions.  

The creator of the content should have a reputation of legitimate, viable content within a given field, lending stature in the market of topics they typically create for.  Therefore, when users search the internet, they are given the best person to go to as well as ‘factually accurate content’.  

Trust: the ability to be relied on as honest or truthful.

The main content needs to show users that they can trust the website, with the above points aggregated. Fundamentally, this is the foundation on which any relationship with your audience is built, and dictates users’ buy-ins to your brand – whether in purchase conversion, amount of faith placed in their information provided, or capacity to consider the brand above its competitors.  

What Are The Google E-E-A-T Characteristics Of A High-Quality Page?

As stated by Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines in section 7.0, a high-quality page should have ‘a beneficial purpose and achieve that purpose well’.  

In addition, a high-quality page should have the following characteristics:

• A high level of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
• A satisfying amount of high-quality main content, including a descriptive or helpful title.
• Satisfying website information and/or information about who is responsible for the website.  For example, an eCommerce site should have satisfying customer service information.
• Positive website reputation for a website that is responsible for the MC on the page.  

On the other hand, the characteristics of a Low-Quality Page include:

• An inadequate level of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)
• The quality of the main content is low
• There is an unsatisfying amount of main content for the purpose of the page – the content, in other words, provides insubstantial content that doesn’t adequately address the needs of the user, and the respective amount of information expected.
• There is an unsatisfying amount of website information or information about the creator of the main content for the purpose of the page
• A mildly negative reputation for a website or creator of MC, based on extensive reputation research

For example, The Iconic is one of Australia’s best online clothing and footwear stores. It is a secure and trustworthy site that ensures free returns, and has a clear, purposeful and extensive customer service section.

On the other hand, the website ShoesBuyEasy is not owned by Nike, yet displays the Nike logo. Unlike The Iconic, this site lacks credibility because it does not offer an official company name, location or verified badges.

How Can You Improve Your Google E-A-T Score?

1. The Name Of The Author   

‘Understanding who is responsible for a website is a critical part of assessing E-A-T’ – at a more granular level, placing a name to an article or source of information makes it accountable. The author exposes him/herself to being fact-checked, in other words, or being vulnerable to criticism. This makes the content appear more trustworthy, as there is no veil of anonymity to shield the author from potential penalisation or contact.

2.  Personal Branding

‘You should expect to find reputation information for the large business and websites of large organisations, as well as known content creators.’ This gives the sense of content as being user or custom-generated – rather than being plagiarised or mass-produced via AI generation with little human intervention.

3.  Remove or Edit Low E-A-T Content

For example, when concerning subject matter with a direct influence on audience health and livelihood, your main content should be backed by some level of justifiable expertise. If an article is offering medical advice, for example, there should always be ‘evidence that the author has medical expertise’, the likes of higher education qualification. However, ‘for some topics, most expert sources of information are ordinary people sharing their life experiences on personal blogs, forums, reviews, discussions etc.’ There is a distinct lack, in other words, of transferable evidence beyond the anecdotal – making provided information hard to trust as an objective, proven source.

4.  Security

Ensure your site is secure.  For example, a ‘shopping checkout that has an insecure connection’ would be considered a ‘low quality’ page.  In order to earn a high-quality rating, quality control and data security measures like software structure integrity or encrypted data should be explored.

What Else Is Google Looking For In ‘High-Quality’ E-A-T Pages?

For more information check out their the entire version of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. If you want to learn more about how website content characteristics can impact search rankings, watch our video below:

At SEO Sydney, we pride ourselves on our authentic approach to ranking strategies. If you are looking for an SEO provider that will provide your pages with expertise, trust and authority, contact us today.