What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These are criteria Google uses to judge whether content is high quality and can be trusted. In short: does the author speak from their own experience, do they know the subject, is the site known as reliable, and can you trust what it says?

Imagine you need to choose a tradesperson. You trust someone who has renovated a hundred bathrooms themselves (experience), who is a qualified plumber (expertise), who others in the trade recommend (authoritativeness) and who has honest reviews and clear terms (trustworthiness). E-E-A-T is Google's way of looking for exactly those signals in your content.

This is especially important for what is called YMYL — "Your Money or Your Life". That covers topics that can affect someone's finances or health, such as advice on loans, medicine or legal matters. Google sets particularly high E-E-A-T requirements there, because bad advice can do real harm.

Why does E-E-A-T matter for your business?

Content that shows experience and credibility generally ranks better and wins readers' trust. It is not about tricks, but about actually showing you know your stuff: who wrote it, why they know the subject, and that the facts hold up. That builds both Google visibility and customer trust at once.

For businesses in finance, health or law, E-E-A-T is close to essential for being visible at all.

E-E-A-T in practice

Say you run a law firm and write a guide on starting a limited company. By stating who wrote the text, showing their experience, linking to the right authorities and keeping the information up to date, you signal experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness in one go.

In practice it comes down to clear author profiles, accurate sources, up-to-date content and avoiding sweeping claims you cannot stand behind.