What is E-A-T & Why it’s Important — Google user intent and trust signals

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. EAT is one factor that Google uses to evaluate the overall quality of a web page. The concept first became well known after the infamous Medic Update in August 2018 when it was leaked by an insider at Google who posted on Medium about how they were “caught up” with trying to keep their new algorithm from going live before testing had been completed.

What’s the deal with Google ranking a page? Well, there are three critical components they look for when determining its E-A-T: The expertise of the creator(s) of all Main Content on that webpage. These authors have to be authoritative figures in their fields and know how to write about it well enough to earn trust from readers who may not be as knowledgeable in this area (or any field). They also need an expert understanding of what makes content trustworthy and high quality if you hope it will rank highly amongst search engine results pages (SERPS.)