What Is E-E-A-T?

What each letter means

• Experience: first-hand involvement, such as having used the product, visited the place or run the process.
• Expertise: knowledge or skill in the subject.
• Authoritativeness: being a recognized go-to source on the topic.
• Trustworthiness: being accurate, honest, safe and reliable.

Google added the first "E" for Experience in December 2022. It says trust is the most important element and that the others contribute to it; content does not have to show all of them.

Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?

Not directly. Google says E-E-A-T itself is not a specific ranking factor, but that its systems use a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T. Google's search quality raters assess E-E-A-T when evaluating results, and Google states that rater data is not used directly in its ranking algorithms; it helps Google check whether its systems are working.

The bar is higher for "Your Money or Your Life" topics such as health, finance and safety, where wrong information can cause real harm.

How a startup can show E-E-A-T

1. Show first-hand experience: real screenshots, data from your own product, honest results and limitations.
2. Name the people: author names, roles and a real About page.
3. Cite sources for statistics and claims, and link to them.
4. Be transparent: clear pricing, contact details, policies and disclosures, including when you compare yourself with competitors.
5. Keep content accurate and dated, and update it when facts change.
6. Earn mentions from respected sites in your field.

Illustrative examples

Hypothetical scenarios that show how the term applies. They are not reports of real cases.

• A comparison page that discloses the author's company, links every competitor's pricing source and says where competitors are better shows trustworthiness.
• A tutorial with the author's own screenshots and error messages from a real setup shows experience that a rewritten summary cannot.