What is Google's E-E-A-T and why it matters
**Updated 19th October 2026. First published in 2021.**
Google has always preferred websites that emphasise quality content. For years, E-A-T was the shorthand for that quality. Since December 2022, it has been E-E-A-T, with an extra E for experience. So what is E-E-A-T, why does it matter and how does it affect AI search?
Post summary:
What is E-E-A-T?
From E-A-T to E-E-A-T
Its impact on YMYL webpages
Online security matters
Personal branding and E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T, AI content and AI search
What Google's core updates have taught us
FAQs
E-A-T first drew wide attention after Google's broad core update on 1st August 2018, which helped better content rank higher in search results. The thinking behind it sits in Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
Google's quality raters use these guidelines to score search results for specific queries.
Their ratings don't directly change rankings.
Google uses them to check whether its ranking systems reward the right pages. Simply put, pages that match the guidelines are the kind of content Google wants to rank well.
What is E-A-T for web pages?
Google's E-E-A-T stands for four qualities.
Experience
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
Google says trust matters most of the four and that a page doesn’t need to show all of them.
Some content helps because of the first-hand experience behind it, and some because of the expertise it shares. Google also says E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor in itself. Its systems look for signals that align with it, making it a strong guide to what your website offers visitors.
Quality raters keep E-E-A-T in mind when they judge how well a page meets visitors' needs. If raters believe a user would feel comfortable reading, sharing and recommending the content, the page earns a high level of E-E-A-T.
Marketers and web developers should treat E-E-A-T as the reason a user would pick their site over the competition. Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content turns it into a set of questions you can ask about every page, including whether it shows first-hand expertise and offers original information other sites do not.
From E-A-T to E-E-A-T
In December 2022, Google added experience to its rater guidelines, placing trust at the centre. The change recognises that someone who has used a product, visited a place or run a business can be as helpful as a credentialed expert, and sometimes more so. Google's guidelines say experience is valuable for almost any topic.
| What it means | How to show it | |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | The author has done, used or lived what they write about | Personal examples, original photos, results and what went wrong |
| Expertise | The author has the knowledge or skill the topic needs | Qualified authors, accurate detail and interviews with specialists |
| Authoritativeness | Others recognise the author or site as a go-to source | Coverage, links and mentions from trusted sites, plus reviews |
| Trustworthiness | The page is accurate, honest, safe and transparent | Clear sources, author bios, contact details, HTTPS and up-to-date facts |
At Blu Mint, we make the author the expert.
For client articles, we use founders or department heads as the named authors. I interview them to draw out their personal insights, so I can quote them directly. That gives each article the first-hand experience and expertise a freelance writer alone cannot supply. Our content writing team builds every article this way, and our guide to human and AI content production explains where AI fits into that process.
How E-A-T impacts “Your Money or Your Life” websites
Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages cover topics that could significantly affect a person's health, financial stability or safety, or society's wellbeing. Google expects the highest level of E-E-A-T from these pages.
YMYL topics include the following.
Medical and health advice
Financial advice, banking and investments
Legal advice
Online shops that take payment details
Government, civic and election information
Examples of YMYL pages include:
An online store requesting credit card information for purchases
A legal website providing advice on the law
A financial institution's blog offering financial advice, services or products
A health page listing symptoms of diseases and medical conditions
High-ranking YMYL pages show a high level of E-E-A-T, because the safer a user feels on a page and the better it answers their question, the more it meets Google's expectations. Websites that genuinely offer useful advice will meet these needs more readily than sites that try to cheat Google's systems.
When I worked on finance content as COO of a comparison startup, we always quoted leading finance experts. We also made sure readers knew to do their own research and compare options before acting on anything we wrote. That combination of expert voices and honest caveats is what trust looks like on a YMYL page.
Online security matters more than ever
Trustworthiness isn't just about reputation or accuracy. It's also about security.
A shopping checkout page with an unsecured connection is an example of a page that should receive a low rating.
Google Chrome has marked HTTP pages as "Not Secure" since 2018, so any website without an SSL certificate that doesn't automatically redirect to HTTPS undermines its trustworthiness.
This is why Blu Mint moved to HTTPS, even though we never take payment information through our website. Both our users and Google can see that we respect our visitors' privacy and security.
Up your personal branding game
If the named content creator lacks the experience, expertise or reputation the page needs, raters should give it a low rating. For example, a contributor writing legal advice should be a lawyer, not an anonymous freelancer.
Raters look for third-party reputation information, not just what the brand or author says about themselves. The guidelines also tell raters that smaller businesses often have little reputation information, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing.
So content writers and contributors should build a positive personal brand if they want their pages to outrank others in their niche. Businesses should be wary of contributors with a reputation for spreading misinformation, as this will severely limit their website's ability to rank well. A lack of reputation won't hurt a writer either. It simply means that authors with a stronger reputation will likely outperform them.
Content writers and contributors can keep their personal brand in good shape in several ways.
Keep their social media profiles active and engage with others in their field. Our social media team helps founders do this consistently.
Build thought leadership by publishing on trusted platforms and earning coverage through digital PR.
Tell their story, with real experience, to connect with an audience.
Keep a clear author bio that links to their background.
All of these help you build a positive reputation in your industry and earn recognition from others as a reliable, trustworthy expert in your niche.
E-E-A-T, AI content and AI search
AI has made E-E-A-T more important, not less.
Google's guidance on using generative AI content says AI can help with research and structure, however producing many pages without adding value for users may breach its spam policy on scaled content abuse. It also tells publishers to fact-check and review AI output before they publish.
Since January 2025 the rater guidelines have allowed raters to give the lowest rating to pages made mostly with automated tools that add little value.
Experience is the one quality AI cannot fake.
A language model can summarise what others have said.
It cannot interview your head of operations, describe a project that went wrong or share results from your own clients. Google's guide to optimising for generative AI search makes the same point, asking for unique, first-hand content and warning against recycling what others have already said.
What about AI citations?
AI answers do cite authors, and in my experience, well-researched pages with named experts get quoted.
Whether E-E-A-T directly helps a page earn AI citations, the jury is still out. What I can say is that the same habits that build E-E-A-T, such as named authors, original insight and accurate facts, are the ones we see in pages that AI tools cite. Our guides to answer engine optimisation for content teams and AI citation tracking go further, and my notes from AI search at BrightonSEO show how often speakers returned to E-E-A-T.
Be realistic about clicks, though.
Strong E-E-A-T does not protect you from AI answers that satisfy the searcher on the results page.
A Pew Research study found that people clicked a link in 8% of Google searches with an AI summary, compared with 15% without one, although Google disputes the method.
Trusted publishers feel it too.
Penske Media, owner of Rolling Stone and Billboard, sued Google in 2025, saying its affiliate revenue had fallen by more than a third from its peak. E-E-A-T earns you rankings and citations. Turning that visibility into enquiries is the next job, which is why we measure citations, branded searches and leads alongside clicks.
You are what you E-E-A-T
Your website will only be as effective as the effort you put into it. E-E-A-T applies at page level, at site level and off-site, so every part of your website needs to meet Google's expectations.
If your pages count as YMYL, this matters even more.
Don't only take my word for it.
Google's rater guidelines treat a lack of E-E-A-T as reason enough to give a page a low-quality rating. So if a page shows no experience, expertise, authority or trust, Google may well consider it low quality.
We began by rewriting our About page so visitors find what they need to know about our company, reviews from past and current clients, company details, social media accounts and how to contact us. It shows that we are open, transparent and trustworthy, and experts in digital marketing and business management. A clear, well-built website makes these trust signals easy to find.
We have applied E-E-A-T to our own content and our clients' content for years, and we have never seen rankings fall as a result of a core update. That is the best argument I know for treating E-E-A-T as a long-term habit, not a quick fix.
Google's June Broad Core Algorithm update
Google updates its core ranking systems several times a year, and some updates hit hard.
The March 2024 core update folded Google's helpful content system into its core ranking systems. When it finished, Google said searchers would see 45% less low-quality, unoriginal content in results. The sites that lost out were mostly those publishing content for search engines first, often at scale and with little original insight.
The lesson has stayed the same.
Google's mission is "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", and its updates keep rewarding pages that serve people first.
Sensationalist headlines, thin content and pages written only to rank tend to lose out.
Website owners must create engaging, useful and accurate content, written or reviewed by people who know the subject.
Do that and you are doing what Google wants, in search results and in AI answers.
Our guides to crafting a strong SEO strategy and unlocking new SEO opportunities show how E-E-A-T fits into a wider plan, and our SEO team can apply it to your site. If you need results sooner, paid search can run alongside it.
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Not directly. Google says E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor in itself, however its systems look for signals that line up with experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Pages that show those qualities tend to perform better over time.
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Only with human input. AI can help with research and drafts, however it cannot supply first-hand experience. Add real examples, quotes from named experts and a human review of every fact before you publish.
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Yes. When an AI answer satisfies the searcher, fewer people click through, however trusted the source. E-E-A-T helps you get ranked and cited, so measure visibility, citations and enquiries alongside clicks.
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Name a real author on every article, ideally a founder or department head, and add a short bio. Share examples from your own work, keep your About and contact pages complete, collect client reviews and make sure your site runs on HTTPS.
