What is E-E-A-T?
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust, the framework Google's quality raters use to assess content quality.
Experience + Expertise + Authoritativeness + Trust
A worked example
Two pages explain return-to-origin in Indian ecommerce. One is written by an anonymous content team from other articles. The other names its author, cites figures from stores they actually run, and explains what happened when they restricted cash on delivery by pincode. The second demonstrates experience the first cannot manufacture.
Why it matters
E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor you can measure, and it matters anyway. Google's rater guidelines shape how ranking systems are trained and evaluated, so the qualities raters are told to reward tend to show up in what ranks.
The first E, experience, was added in 2022 and it is the one that has become most valuable, because it is the hardest thing to generate at scale. Expertise can be researched. Authoritativeness accumulates through links and mentions. First-hand experience either exists or it does not, and it shows in the specifics: real numbers, named situations, what actually went wrong.
Trust is described as the most important component and it is largely mechanical. Accurate contact details, a real address, named authors, clear policies, secure connection, and claims that match what a reader can verify. For anything touching health, money or safety, the bar rises sharply.
The nuance most people miss
Fabricated experience is worse than no experience. Writing "in my experience as a dentist" when no dentist was involved is flagged in the rater guidelines as misleading authorship, and it is a low-quality signal rather than a shortcut. The safe version of demonstrating experience is specificity you can stand behind: the situation, the figure, the outcome. If you cannot supply those details, write from expertise instead and let the authority come from accuracy.
Common mistakes
- Publishing without named authors on content where a reader would reasonably ask who wrote it
- Claiming first-hand experience that nobody involved actually has
- Treating E-E-A-T as a checklist rather than as evidence a reader can verify
- Ignoring the mechanical trust signals: address, contact details, policies, secure connection