E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. The concept comes from the guidelines Google gives to the human raters who evaluate the quality of its search results. The first letter, experience, was added in December 2022; before that the concept was known as E-A-T.
Let's correct a common misconception right away: E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor that gives your site a score. Raters' assessments don't directly change the ranking of individual sites; they are used to measure how well Google's search systems are working. But the goal of those systems is to surface reliable, helpful content. So E-E-A-T is not a checklist; it is a description of the qualities a good website should have.
Four letters, four questions
It helps to think of each letter as a question in the visitor's mind:
| Letter | The visitor's question | How it shows on the site |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | Have they actually done this work? | Real project photos, write-ups of real jobs, examples from the field |
| Expertise | Was this written by someone who knows the subject? | Author details, technical accuracy, team introductions |
| Authority | Do others talk about them? | Mentions in industry publications, association memberships, links |
| Trust | Can I trust this company with my data and my money? | Clear contact details, transparent policies, a secure site |
In Google's guidelines, trust sits at the center of all four. The other three support trust; without trust, they aren't enough on their own.
Trust, the most basic and most neglected layer
Most trust signals are technically simple but often left out:
- Official details such as the registered company name, address, phone number and tax office.
- A contact form that works and an email address that gets answered.
- A privacy notice under KVKK (Türkiye's Personal Data Protection Law) wherever personal data is collected, and explicit consent where required. We cover this on our KVKK compliance page.
- A valid SSL certificate and a site that doesn't trigger browser warnings.
- For e-commerce, a distance sales agreement, return terms and delivery information.
- Up-to-date content: a "new product" announcement from 2019 or a copyright line that hasn't changed in years tells visitors the site is neglected.
For topics that directly affect people's lives or money, such as health, finance and law, Google's guidelines set a much higher bar for trust. If you work in these areas, it must be visible who wrote the content and who reviewed it.
Showing experience beats claiming it
The phrase "with our team of experts" proves nothing. What demonstrates experience is detail. A mechanical contractor's article titled "The pressure problem we ran into while commissioning the ventilation system at a hospital project, and how we solved it" builds more trust than ten pages of general introduction. You don't have to share project or client names without the client's permission; describing the industry, the scope and the problem is enough.
The same principle applies to your service pages. Explaining concretely what you do, how you do it and what the client will experience along the way makes the page more valuable to both visitors and search engines. We cover how to write one in our post on how to write a service page.
Author details and the About page
Blog posts and guides should show the author's name, title and a short bio. Even for content written on behalf of the company, a note like "This article was prepared by our technical team and updated on this date" makes a difference.
The About page, meanwhile, gets the least effort on most sites. Yet how long the company has been operating, who is on the team, which industries it serves and where it is located are the core sources both visitors and AI systems use to get to know your company. We explain the role of trust signals in AI answers in our post on appearing in AI answers.
Authority comes from outside
You can't produce authority on your own site; it builds up when others talk about you. Industry associations, trade fair exhibitor lists, supplier or partner pages, professional chambers and local press are natural sources. Buying links, on the other hand, violates Google's policies and does harm in the long run.
Practical checklist
- Does the footer clearly show the registered company name, address and phone number?
- Does the About page contain concrete information, or is it made up of generic sentences?
- Do blog posts show the author and the date they were last updated?
- Are the KVKK texts, cookie notice and any sales agreements up to date?
- Do at least a few pages include real work examples and photos?
- Is there any outdated, contradictory or broken content left on the site?
How we do it at Globya
When we build a corporate website, we treat trust signals as part of the page plan, not as decoration to add later: company details, KVKK texts, contact channels and content that shows experience are planned from the start. KVKK requirements are never left incomplete in our work, and we don't charge extra for them. In our SEO and GEO work, we also review the trust layer of the existing site as a separate item.
Is E-E-A-T a score, and can I measure it?
No, Google doesn't show you an E-E-A-T score. You can assess where your site stands yourself using the questions in the checklist.
As a small company, how do I compete with big rivals?
The experience letter is an opportunity for small companies. Content written about a narrow field with concrete knowledge from real work can be more valuable than the generic copy of large companies.
Does content written with AI hurt E-E-A-T?
Google says it looks at whether content is helpful and accurate rather than how it was produced. However, mass-produced content without real experience and human review carries no trust signal.
The Globya assistant is online 24/7; it answers right away and passes your question to the team if needed.