E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust: Google's shorthand for the qualities its raters look for in a page. It is not a score you can read anywhere, but the underlying evidence is visible on your site.
Updated August 21, 2026
E-E-A-T is often discussed as if it were a hidden metric. It is better read as a checklist of things you either show or you do not: who wrote this, what they have actually done, whether anyone independent says so, and whether the business behind the page is identifiable and reachable. Those are the same things that make a page safe for a model to quote, which is why the work overlaps almost entirely with GEO.
Related terms
- Trust signals. Checkable evidence that you are a real, accountable business. This includes an about page, contact and legal details, references or case studies, and claims backed by sources. AI systems favor accountable pages over anonymous ones.
- Sourceability. How usable your content is as a source. It asks whether there are concrete facts and figures, attributed claims, and information laid out in extractable structures like tables and lists.
- Knowledge graph. A machine-held map of things and how they relate: this company, its products, its location, its people. Search engines and AI systems consult one to decide who you are before deciding whether to quote you.