E-E-A-T Checklist

What Google's quality raters look for, and how to show it.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. It comes from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the handbook for people who rate sample search results so Google can check whether its ranking changes work. The guidelines say Trust is the most important of the four, because a page that isn't trustworthy has low E-E-A-T however experienced, expert or authoritative it seems. The other three are ways of judging whether a page deserves that trust.

E-E-A-T is not a score Google calculates for your site. Google's guide to helpful content says E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor, though its systems use a mix of signals that line up with it, and they give extra weight to those signals on topics that could affect people's health, money, safety or society. The rater guidelines also say no single rating directly changes how a page ranks. This checklist turns the guidelines (September 11, 2025 edition) and Google's helpful content questions into concrete things to check on your own pages.

Last reviewed October 2, 2026 against the sources below.

The four parts

How the rater guidelines define each part, with the kind of example they use.

Part	What raters consider	Example
Experience	Whether the creator has first-hand or life experience of the topic	A product review by someone who has actually used the product is more trustworthy than one by someone who hasn't
Expertise	Whether the creator has the knowledge or skill the topic needs; different topics need different kinds	Wiring advice from a qualified electrician beats advice from a hobbyist with no electrical knowledge
Authoritativeness	Whether the creator or the website is known as a go-to source for the topic	An official government page is the authoritative source for renewing a passport
Trust	Whether the page is accurate, honest, safe and reliable. The guidelines call it the most important part	A financial scam is untrustworthy however experienced or expert the scammer seems

Checklist

Things to check on your own site, each tied to Google's guidelines or questions.

Part	Check	Why it matters
Trust	The site says who runs it, with an About page and contact details	Raters start by finding who is responsible for a website and how to reach them
Trust	Sites that take money show customer service details; stores also show their payment, exchange and return policies	The guidelines call contact and customer service information extremely important for stores and banks
Trust	Facts are correct and easy to verify, with clear sourcing	Google's self-assessment asks whether content has easily verified factual errors and clear sourcing
Trust	Reviews and recommendations disclose any conflict of interest	Raters treat a manufacturer's own "reviews" or paid promotion as less trustworthy
Trust	Dates change only when the content substantially changes	Google lists changing dates to make pages seem fresh as a warning sign
Experience	Content shows the creator actually did, used or visited the thing, with their own details, photos or results	First-hand experience is the first E, and the guidelines value it highly for reviews and personal accounts
Expertise	Pages carry a byline where readers would expect one, linked to background on the author	Google's "Who" question asks whether it's self-evident who wrote the content
Expertise	Topics that need specialist knowledge are written or reviewed by someone who has it	Google asks whether content is written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well
Authoritativeness	Independent sources (reviews, references, news) say good things about the site or creator	Raters look at what others say, not only at what a site says about itself
Trust	Use of AI or automation is disclosed where readers would ask how the content was made	Google's "How" question covers disclosing automation and AI generation
Trust	The page exists to help people, not mainly to attract search visits	Google's "Why" question: people-first content is what its systems try to reward

YMYL topics

Your Money or Your Life: topics where inaccurate content could seriously harm people. These get the most scrutiny.

Type of harm	What it covers
Health or safety	Topics that could harm mental, physical or emotional health, or any kind of safety, such as the symptoms of a heart attack or what to do in an earthquake
Financial security	Topics that could damage someone's ability to support themselves and their family, such as how to invest money
Government, civics and society	Topics that affect groups of people, trust in public institutions or election information, such as who can vote
Other	Topics that could hurt people or harm the welfare or well-being of society in other ways

Good to know

Experience can count on YMYL topics

Personal accounts of difficult experiences can have high E-E-A-T when they're trustworthy, safe and consistent with well-established expert consensus. Some information and advice on those topics, though, must come from experts.

Don't fake the signals

Google says fabricating creator profiles is deceptive, and lists changing dates without substantial updates as a warning sign. Real bylines, real sources and honest dates are the point; no markup adds E-E-A-T on its own.

AI-written content

Google's guidance suggests disclosing automation or AI where readers would reasonably wonder how content was made. Its guidance on generative AI asks for accuracy, quality and relevance however content is produced, and warns that generating many pages without adding value can break its scaled content abuse policy.

Sources

Search engines and AI companies change their documentation often; check the source before relying on a detail.