In December 2022, Google updated their Quality Rater Guidelines and with it, the concept of E-A-T. Previously ‘Expertise, Authority and Trust’, Google has now extended the acronym to include ‘Experience’, in order to tackle poor-quality content published online. 

In this guide, we’ll take you through the Google E-E-A-T update and how you can demonstrate experience in your content. 

What is E-A-T?

E-A-T stands for Expertise (E), Authority (A) and Trust (T). These three principles are vital to SEO success, with each serving as a signal for Google to measure the value of a website. Think of them as guidelines, a way of ensuring that users can trust you and your business. The more trustworthy your site is, and the better your expertise, the more helpful your content will likely be for users. 

We’ve gone into more detail about the principles of E-A-T and why it’s an essential part of your SEO strategy in this guide .In this blog, we’re going to focus on the latest Google E–E-A-T algorithm update, which saw the addition of  ‘experience’ signals. 

What is the Google E-E-A-T update?

As part of their latest update to the Quality Rater Guidelines, Google added ‘Experience’ to the previous E-A-T signals. This means that E-A-T is now E-E-A-T, which stands for: 

Experience – the experience the content creator has using the product or in the topic.

Expertise – the content creator’s overall knowledge on the topic. This initially seems similar to ‘Experience.’ However, there are circumstances when you can be an expert on a particular topic, but there are areas you have not yet experienced.

Authority – how reliable is the source? How often are they the go-to for the industry? For example, you’d go to the BBC for the latest news updates, or the NHS for health problems.

Trust – Google describes this as ‘the most important member of the E-E-A-T family’. If a user doesn’t trust you or your business, they’re unlikely to buy from you or use your services. Trust signals come from reviews, case studies, About and Meet the Team pages, to name a few.

What is ‘Experience’ in E–E-A-T?

Experience represents the knowledge gained by the content creator’s first-hand experience. This type of knowledge is important for the user as it means taking advice from a genuine source. 

For example, if you’re considering buying new software but want to know what the best options are, reviews would be valuable as the user can find out how good various programmes are based on users’ experiences. 

Google has been using E-A-T signals for years as part of its algorithms to determine whether the content creator is providing information that users can trust. Also, the growth in AI content creation has provided businesses with a way of writing content quickly, without the depth or expertise needed to create a truly valuable piece. This is likely a reason for this update. 

Google provided examples of what content written without E-E-A-T could look like:

- A restaurant review written by someone who has never been

- An article about skydiving when the creator has no experience or expertise

- Content written by someone who is not an authoritative source, such as tax form downloads on a cooking site

- A page that isn’t trustworthy enough, such as a shopping page with little customer service information.

For our guide on how to optimise your content for ‘Experience’, read the full guide on: https://www.loomdigital.co.uk/insights/googles-eeat-update-optimising-for-experience/