Search and SEO
What is E-E-A-T?
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. It is not a ranking factor — it is the framework Google’s human quality raters use to assess whether a page deserves to rank, and it shapes what the ranking systems are trained to prefer.
Also called: Experience Expertise Authoritativeness Trust
What each part means in practice
- Experience
- Has the author actually done the thing? First-hand detail is hard to fake and easy to recognise.
- Expertise
- Do they know the subject well enough to be right about the edge cases?
- Authoritativeness
- Do others treat them as a source? This is where links and citations do their work.
- Trust
- Can a reader tell who is behind the site, how to contact them, and what the terms are? Trust is the one the guidelines call most important.
How to demonstrate it on a small site
- Name a real author with a real biography and traceable profiles
- Publish work you have actually done, with links that can be opened
- Say what you do not know and will not promise
- Publish contact details, terms and policies rather than hiding them
- Show dates, so a reader can judge currency for themselves
The part most sites skip
Trust signals are the cheapest to add and the most commonly missing: an about page with a real person on it, a contact page with a real route, terms, a privacy policy, and a legal identity. Their absence is treated as a negative on any page asking for money.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers this properly — 6 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.