Evidence Authority & Trust

E-E-A-T and Experience are central to Google's quality assessment

Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines centre page and site quality on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust, with Trust as the most important member.

ID
SS-EV-003
Confidence
High · 92
Evidence
Strong
Updated
2026-07-08

The claim

Google evaluates content quality through E-E-A-T, treating demonstrated first-hand Experience and overall Trust as decisive for Your-Money-or-Your-Life topics.

What the evidence shows

The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines instruct human raters to assess the E-E-A-T of the content creator and the main content, and state explicitly that Trust is the most important factor, with the other three supporting it. The addition of the extra 'E' for Experience emphasises first-hand or life experience as a quality signal, especially for YMYL topics.

Source

Source
Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines
Type
Google documentation
Year
2024
Strength
Strong

How SearchScore applies it

Recommended next steps

    Apply the method Entity Authority Framework Framework Diagnose the symptom Weak Authority Pattern See the wider capability Entity Authority Development Capability