E-E-A-T
Google's framework for assessing content quality across four lenses: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust.
Definition
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. It is a framework Google's Search Quality Raters use when evaluating the quality of pages and sites, with Trust treated as the central pillar of the four.
E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking signal that Google reads from a page. It is a concept used by human raters to score sample search results, and Google says its algorithms are designed to align with the same idea. Experience was added to the framework in 2022 — recognising that first-hand experience of a topic (a reviewer who has actually used the product, a parent describing their own child's diagnosis) can be valuable evidence of quality. The framework matters most for 'Your Money or Your Life' topics — finance, health and similar areas where bad information can cause real harm.
Examples
First-hand experience
A travel blog publishes a review of a hotel based on the writer's actual two-night stay, with their own photographs. That demonstrates Experience in a way an aggregated review page cannot.
Trust on a finance topic
A personal-finance site shows the author's professional credentials, cites primary sources, and links to the regulator's website for definitive advice. Those signals support the Trust component of E-E-A-T.
Sources
Related terms
Where QueryCatch uses this
Last updated: 2026-05-10