Why Google E-A-T Gets an Extra E for Experience

Many creators are familiar with the concept of Google E-A-T, which is used in how Google evaluates if its search ranking systems provide helpful, relevant information.

Would ordinary people feel the results they get demonstrate E-A-T: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness?

What is Experience on the web?

E-A-T is gaining an E: experience to assess Google's results better. Does content also demonstrate that it was produced with some experience, such as using a product, having actually visited a place, or communicating what a person experienced? In some situations, you value most content produced by someone with first-hand life experience on the topic at hand.

For example, if you're looking for information on how to fill out your tax returns correctly, that's probably a situation where you want to see content produced by an expert in the field of accounting. But if you're looking for tax preparation software reviews, you might be looking for different information—maybe it's a forum discussion from people with experience with different services.

If you prefer, E-E-A-T — or "Double-E-A-T" is now part of the updated search rater E-E-A-T guidelines Google released on December 5, 2022. You'll also see more explicit guidance throughout the guidelines, underscoring the importance of content created to be original and helpful for people and explaining that helpful information can come in a variety of different formats and from a range of sources.

An Update to Google Search Rate Guidelines

These are not fundamentally new ideas. And Google is not abandoning the fundamental principle that Search seeks to surface reliable information, especially on topics where information quality is critically important. Rather, Google hopes these updates better capture the nuances of how people look for information and the diversity of quality information worldwide.

As a reminder, these guidelines are used by Google's search raters to help evaluate the performance of Google's various search ranking systems, and they don't directly influence ranking. They can also be useful to creators seeking to understand how to self-assess their content to be successful in Google Search. Google's page on creating helpful, people-first content has a section that explains this more.