What is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust)?
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust — the framework in Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines used to assess content quality. It is a set of criteria human raters apply, not a score any algorithm computes or any tool can report.
The guidelines direct raters to ask whether the author has first-hand experience of the subject, demonstrable expertise in it, recognition beyond their own site, and whether the page and site can be trusted. Trust is described as the most important of the four.
The distinction that gets lost commercially is that E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor. Rater judgements do not adjust the ranking of the pages rated; they are aggregate feedback used to evaluate changes to the systems. Any tool selling an "E-E-A-T score" is reporting its own invention, not a Google metric.
It remains worth attending to, because the qualities raters are told to look for are the ones the ranking systems are being tuned to approximate. Named authors with verifiable credentials, cited sources, clear ownership and contact information, and content that shows evidence of actual use are all things a reader can check — and increasingly things a model weighs when deciding which of two similar pages to trust.
The first E, Experience, was added in December 2022 and is the one most often skipped. It asks whether the content shows the author has actually done the thing, which is difficult to fake and correspondingly valuable.
Why E-E-A-T matters
It describes what human quality raters are told to value, which is the closest public statement of what search systems are being tuned to reward.
Not a ranking factor, and not a score
Rater assessments evaluate the systems; they do not adjust individual page rankings. No tool can measure a page's E-E-A-T.
Trust is the centre of the framework
Google describes trust as the most important member. The other three support it rather than standing alone.
Experience is the differentiator
Evidence of having actually used, visited or done the thing is hard to fabricate and the most recent addition to the framework.
It matters most on consequential topics
Standards are applied most strictly to pages that could affect health, finances or safety.
Common questions
No. There is no such score. Google publishes E-E-A-T as criteria for human quality raters, and rater judgements are not applied to individual pages. A tool reporting an E-E-A-T number is reporting a metric it made up.