What isE-E-A-T?
Four letters from Google's rater handbook and what they mean for your company website.
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Get your AI visibility checked or call: +49 151 1576 5566E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness and describes how Google's quality raters are meant to recognise good content. According to Google it isn't a ranking factor of its own. It still matters, because the guidelines describe what Google's systems are supposed to reward.
- The framework comes from the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, a handbook anyone can read.
- The second E, for experience, was added on 15 December 2022.
- Trust carries the most weight.
- Google's AI Overviews follow the same principles, while other AI services have published nothing comparable.
What does E-E-A-T mean, and why does trust count most?
The four traits don't carry equal weight. In its documentation on helpful content, Google calls trust the most important aspect, with the others contributing to it, and content doesn't have to show all four at once. The rater guidelines put it even more plainly: if a page isn't trustworthy, its E-E-A-T is low, however knowledgeable it may look.
The raters themselves don't move pages around. According to Google their assessments don't feed directly into rankings, they serve more as a check on whether Google's own systems deliver good results (a bit like feedback cards in a restaurant). For topics touching health, money or safety, which Google calls YMYL, its systems weigh strong E-E-A-T even more heavily.
How do you strengthen E-E-A-T on your website, including for AI search?
What helps is craft rather than tricks. Make it visible who wrote a piece, keep your legal notice and contact details complete, back up figures and claims, and show what you have done, measured or experienced yourself. That last point is good news for smaller companies, because what you know from your workshop or your projects is something generic text can't provide.
For ChatGPT, Perplexity and the like, nobody has published criteria matching E-E-A-T. Studies do see a link between visibility in AI answers and mentions on other sites, cited sources and statistics. Our working hypothesis, labelled as such: AI systems prefer to name companies that independent sites write about. That's no guarantee, more of a sensible bet.
Frequently asked questions
Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?
Not in the narrow sense. Google itself says E-E-A-T isn't a specific ranking factor, and that its systems use a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T.
What is the difference between E-A-T and E-E-A-T?
The extra E for experience, meaning first hand experience, which Google added on 15 December 2022.
Can I look up my E-E-A-T score somewhere?
No, there is no such score. You can only measure the effects, for example whether AI answers mention your company and whether what they say is correct.
Where to go deeper
E-E-A-T: trust signals for Google and AI search
AI SEO
Measure AI visibility
Terms you should know in the same context
GEO (generative engine optimization) · AI Overviews · Structured data · AI visibility · Visibility index · Back to the AI glossary A to Z
Showing openly who stands behind your content and where your knowledge comes from convinces raters, customers and AI systems by the same means.