---
term: "E-E-A-T"
canonical: https://citable.wiki/glossary/e-e-a-t
also_known_as: "Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness; formerly E-A-T"
license: CC BY 4.0
---

# E-E-A-T

**Definition:** E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the framework Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines use to describe whether a page and its author deserve to be believed. It is not a direct ranking signal but a description of the qualities Google's ranking systems try to reward, with trust named as the most important of the four.

Google's quality rater guidelines used **E-A-T** for years before the extra E. Experience was added in December 2022 to distinguish first-hand knowledge — having actually used the product, visited the place or run the test — from expertise learned second-hand ([Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t)). Google's guidance on [helpful, reliable, people-first content](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content) adds that a page need not demonstrate all four qualities, that trust matters most, and that the bar is higher for topics affecting health, money or safety.

For answer engines the framework matters because a retrieval system cannot judge expertise directly. It relies on proxies it can verify: a named author with a profile page, visible published and updated dates, outbound links to primary sources, and a consistent identity for the author and organisation across the web. Google states there are no additional requirements for appearing in AI Overviews beyond the same people-first guidance, so E-E-A-T is the trust layer underneath every other tactic in [E-E-A-T for answer engines](/guides/eeat-for-answer-engines).

The cheapest machine-checkable signal is `Person` markup attached to the `Article`:

```json
"author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "url": "https://example.com/authors/jane-doe",
  "jobTitle": "Technical writer",
  "sameAs": ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"]
}
```

## Frequently asked questions

### Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?

Not directly. Google describes E-E-A-T as the framework its quality raters use to evaluate results, and says its ranking systems use a mix of signals that tend to identify content with strong E-E-A-T. For a page, the practical reading is the same either way: show who wrote it, what qualifies them, and where the claims come from.

## Related guides

- [E-E-A-T for answer engines: authors, dates and sources that machines can verify](https://citable.wiki/guides/eeat-for-answer-engines)
- [What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?](https://citable.wiki/guides/what-is-answer-engine-optimization)
- [Structured data for AI answers: the schema.org types that matter](https://citable.wiki/guides/structured-data-for-ai-answers)

---

Source: https://citable.wiki/glossary/e-e-a-t