Reference
What is Trust signals?
Trust signals are the cues telling a visitor — and a search quality evaluator — that a business is real and accountable: contact details, a named person, terms, policies, reviews and evidence of work. Their absence counts against a site that asks for money.
Also called: credibility signals
The ones that cost nothing
- A contact page with a real route, not only a form
- An about page naming an actual person with traceable profiles
- Terms, a privacy policy and a refund policy, published and reachable
- A physical location or service area, stated honestly
- Work you have actually done, with links that can be opened
Why they matter to search specifically
Google’s quality rater guidelines direct evaluators to look for who is responsible for a site and how to contact them, and to treat the absence of that information as a negative for any page asking for money or personal data.
The counter-intuitive one
Stating what you do not have — no certifications, no insurance, no company registration — reads as more trustworthy than omitting it, because procurement verifies these things and an omission is discovered as a claim.
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.