Picture two electricians' websites in Girona, both explaining when an old flat needs a new fuse box. The first has a decent text, no byline and a stock photo. The second is signed by the electrician who does the job every week: it says what they check first, shows photos of a fuse box they replaced last month in Salt, and at the bottom there is a phone number, an address and reviews. All else being equal, Google has more reason to trust the second. That is E-E-A-T, and almost everything that demonstrates it is in your hands.
What E-E-A-T means
It stands for four things Google takes into account when deciding which content is helpful and trustworthy:
- Experience: the writer has done it or lived it. A review from someone who has used the product is worth more than one from someone who has never touched it.
- Expertise: they know the subject. Google's guidelines use this example: for rewiring a house, advice from a skilled electrician beats advice from an antique homes enthusiast.
- Authoritativeness: others see you as a go-to source for what you do.
- Trust: the page is accurate, honest, safe and reliable.
The first E is the newest. Google added it on 15 December 2022 to its quality raters' guidelines, which until then only spoke of E-A-T, to recognise content from people with first-hand experience.
Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?
No, and Google says so plainly in its guide to creating helpful, reliable, people-first content: E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor. What its systems do is use a mix of signals that help identify content with good experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
It matters more for some topics than others. Google gives even more weight to E-E-A-T for anything that could significantly affect people's health, finances or safety, which it calls YMYL topics (Your Money or Your Life). A dental clinic, an accountancy firm or a gas fitter competes on that ground; an ice-cream shop much less so.
What about the raters? Google works with people who score results using public guidelines, but their scores do not move any page. According to Google, they help it check that its systems work, the way a restaurant uses feedback from its diners.
Trust matters most
Of the four letters, T counts the most. The quality rater guidelines (September 2025 version) put it bluntly: an untrustworthy page has low E-E-A-T no matter how experienced or expert it may seem. The other three support trust, but content does not need to show all of them on every page.
So what counts as trustworthy? It depends on the page. For an online shop, the same guidelines ask for secure payments, reliable customer service and contact details that include the policies on payment, exchanges and returns. For a service business, the basics are that people can see who is behind it, where it is and how to get in touch.
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Who, how and why: Google's three questions
Google suggests checking every piece of content against three questions. They are the most practical way to work on E-E-A-T without getting lost in theory.
Who wrote it?
Google asks whether it is clear who created the content, whether there is a byline where readers expect one, and whether that byline leads to more information about the author. It also warns against the opposite: fabricating author profiles, with AI-generated headshots, made-up names or false credentials, is deception, and any deception makes a page untrustworthy.
How was it made?
Readers find it useful to know how the content was put together. If you compare products, how many you tested and how; if you explain a job, photos of the process. If a substantial part of the text was written by AI, Google recommends saying so where readers might wonder how it was made. We cover that in our article on AI-generated content.
Why does it exist?
For Google this is the most important question. The right answer is that the content was made to help the people who come to your website. If the answer is “to attract visits from Google”, you are already off course, and if you use automation to churn out pages to manipulate rankings, you break its spam policies.
What raters look at in the content
Beyond E-E-A-T, Google's guide lists four things raters assess in the main content of a page:
- Effort: the human work behind it. Writing your own analysis takes effort; generating hundreds of pages with AI and no review does not. Citing others does not replace original effort.
- Originality: what you say that is not on other websites.
- Talent or skill: clear writing, a well-made video, a tool that works.
- Accuracy: correct facts and, on YMYL topics, consistency with expert consensus.
For a small business, originality is the easy part. Nobody else has your jobs, your customers, your prices or the questions people ask you at the counter.
How to show E-E-A-T on a business website
None of this needs expensive tools. It is about saying clearly what you already are.
Sign with your name and trade
Every article with the name of whoever wrote it and a link to their profile: what they do, how long they have done it and a real photo. On this blog, every article is signed by Ivan Martir and links to the author profile on our team page.
An About us page that says who you are
It is where Google, AI assistants and your customers go to check who is behind the business. Names, faces, trade and years of work, rather than adjectives. How to write it is in our article on the About us page.
Real work, with your own photos
A before and after, a finished job, the workshop from the inside. That is the first-hand experience the guidelines ask for, and no stock photo can replace it.
Named testimonials and reviews
Authority comes from others: customers describing what you did for them, trade media or associations that mention you. On your site, testimonials with full names; elsewhere, your Google reviews with replies. We explain it in testimonials on your website.
Contact details, prices and terms in plain sight
Phone, address, opening hours and legal pages where nobody has to hunt for them. If you publish prices, even better: few things build more trust. And if you sell online, payment, delivery and returns terms before checkout.
Structured data that explains it to machines
A page's markup can say who the author is, which business publishes it and where it is. It does not raise your E-E-A-T on its own, but it helps Google and AI assistants connect each thing to its owner. See our article on structured data.
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E-E-A-T and AI answers
To appear in Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode there is nothing extra to do. Google says so in its page on AI features and your website: there are no additional requirements or special optimisations, and the same best practices apply, starting with helpful, reliable, people-first content. In other words, E-E-A-T work pays off twice: in search and in getting cited by AI. It is the basis of our GEO service.
Mistakes that cost trust
Nearly all of them come from the list Google asks you to review:
- Unsigned articles, or ones signed by “the team” on a website that never says who the team is.
- Invented authors with AI-made photos. For Google, that is deception, full stop.
- Changing the date on an article to make it look updated when nothing substantial has changed.
- Writing about topics you do not know just because they bring traffic.
- Summarising what others say without adding anything of your own.
- Writing to hit a word count. Google says it has no preferred word count.
What it costs to work on your website's E-E-A-T
It is not a separate service: it is part of content work. Our prices are published:
- Basic Presence, €400 a month: three articles a month on your website and three on your Google profile, replies to all your reviews and visibility in AI answers.
- Mid Presence, €750 a month: five and five, plus management of your Google Ads and Meta Ads.
- Advanced Presence, €1,500 a month: seven and seven, the campaigns and two social media posts a month.
All plus VAT, with no lock-in and no setup fee. If you do not have a website yet, Your Website is €200 a month, with ten subpages and one article a month. What goes into each article, from the keyword to the FAQs, is on our web articles page. AI helps us research and organise; we review the text by hand, with your business's own details.
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Your website's E-E-A-T, reviewed from the Palau Firal
We are three partners working at the same table, in the Palau Firal in Sant Antoni de Calonge, next to Palamós. Send us a link to your website and we will tell you which trust signals it is missing and where we would start. No commitment. You can also write to us through the contact form.