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Google’s E-A-T: Busting 10 of the Biggest Misconceptions by Lily Ray #503
Google's E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It is not an algorithm, a direct ranking factor, or a quick fix, but a set of conceptual signals that influence search quality over time.
Key takeaways
- E-A-T is not an algorithm or a direct ranking factor, and there is no internal E-A-T score according to Google.
- YMYL sites covering health, finance, or e-commerce face the highest E-A-T expectations from Google's quality raters.
- Improving E-A-T takes time and does not produce immediate ranking gains the way technical fixes like site speed do.
- E-A-T should be added on top of existing SEO work, not used as a replacement for technical SEO or other ranking efforts.
EAT is not a direct ranking factor. So expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness are also not individual ranking factors.
About this episode
Google’s E-A-T: Busting 10 of the Biggest MisconceptionsE-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is a concept Google first published in its 2014 edition of the Search Quality Guidelines. These guidelines are used during Google’s search quality evaluations, in which it hires thousands of quality reviewers who are tasked with manually reviewing a set of webpages and submitting feedback about the…
Questions this episode answers
Is E-A-T a Google ranking factor?
No. According to the episode, Google's Danny Sullivan confirmed there is no technical E-A-T ranking factor that can be measured directly like page speed. E-A-T is a set of conceptual signals that quality raters use to evaluate content, not a single measurable score.
Does adding an author biography directly improve rankings?
Not by itself. The episode says Google cannot recognize every author, and quality raters look at what the biography actually says and whether the author has off-site mentions from authoritative sources. The entity behind the author matters more than simply having a byline.
When was E-A-T first introduced by Google?
E-A-T was first introduced in the 2014 version of the Google Quality Guidelines, according to the episode. It was not created with the August 1, 2018 core algorithm update, which was informally named Medic by Barry Schwartz, not officially named by Google.
In their words
Google has a collection of millions of tiny algorithms that work in unison to spit out a ranking score. Many of those baby algorithms look for signals and pages or content that can be conceptualized as EAT.
Host
Addressing eat takes time. So we all know there's certain SEO tactics. For instance, you speed up your website like that's one such as optimizing metadata or fixing technical issues. You can see immediate performance increase. Eat doesn't work that way.
Host
EAT is something to add into the mix on top of what you're already doing for people that were, they felt that were negatively affected by this update that happened kind of, you know, August, September, like kind of range of this year.
Guest
Terms defined in this episode
- E-A-T
- Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. A set of conceptual signals Google quality raters use to evaluate content quality, not a direct ranking factor or a single algorithm.
- YMYL
- Your Money or Your Life. Topics that can directly impact a reader's happiness, health, financial success, or well-being, including e-commerce sites that collect credit card information.
- Quality Raters
- Human reviewers hired by Google who use the Quality Guidelines to evaluate search results. The episode notes there are approximately 20,000 quality raters and the guidelines are roughly 160 pages long.
- Core Algorithm Update
- Broad changes Google makes to its ranking systems. According to the episode, all such updates are called core updates and happen in real time, with the August 1, 2018 update informally nicknamed Medic by Barry Schwartz.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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