EAT

Updated: 09/12/2023 by Computer Hope
EAT or Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust

Short for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, EAT or E-A-T is part of the Google search algorithm to help determine the quality of a web page. These ranking signals started to get attention in 2017 as many authoritative websites (e.g., medical advice sites) began to notice a significant drop in traffic.

What is YMYL?

EAT primarily focuses on YMYL (your money or your life) websites that could impact the viewer's future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. For these sites, the author of your content must be mentioned on authoritative sites (i.e., news mention) and demonstrate author authoritativeness and trust.

Tip

Use a service like HARO (help a reporter out) to find opportunities to get mentioned in the news and other sources online.

Examples of YMYL websites

Below are examples of website categories that fall under YMYL.

What are low-quality pages?

Low-quality pages are web pages where the author doesn't have enough expertise for the topic, or the website (brand) isn't seen as authoritative. Follow the EAT guidelines on this page to help prevent your pages from being ranked as low-quality by Google raters.

Demonstrating author authoritativeness

To show your author's authoritativeness, all pages should link to an author showing their qualifications. Below are examples of what your author bio should include.

  • Degrees and schooling.
  • Years of experience.
  • Authoritative mentions (e.g., mentioned in the news).
  • Other places to find the person on the Internet (e.g., social platforms).
  • Other information on how the author is considered an expert on the subject.

Can my brand be my author?

If you have a well-established brand, it can be the author, although it's believed that having a single expert author is a better signal. An author isn't needed if you're a brand known worldwide by everyone (e.g., Apple or Microsoft).

Computer Hope uses its name as its author because multiple people create, review, and maintain our pages. However, we give a complete overview of our company and authors on our About Computer Hope page.

How to build trust

To demonstrate your website's trust, each page should have the following.

  • Have an author or who's responsible for the content.
  • Contact information.
  • If the site sells a product or service, there should be a refund page.
  • Ensure content is frequently updated or reviewed, especially if it's a YMYL site. When a page is updated, it should be mentioned on the page.
  • Information pages should have references.
  • Pages should have no spelling or grammar errors.
  • The site should be HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure) and not HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol).
  • The site is not overwhelmed with advertising, affiliate links, or using deceptive ads.
  • Ensure your company has no negative reviews with the BBB (Better Business Bureau).
  • Monitor other sites and online reviews by doing the following Google search. This search shows any site on the Internet that is not under your domain (in this example, replace computerhope.com with your domain).

computerhope.com -site:computerhope.com

What is EEAT?

After EAT was introduced, Google introduced EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) that also looks at the first-hand experience of the content creator. What is first-hand experience? It's someone who uses the product or service, has visited the place, or has communicated with the person being discussed. If the information appears to be copied from an alternate source (e.g., Wikipedia), it signals that the author has no experience.

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