Indepth Google's EAT - What is EAT & How it works?

E.A.T is an abbreviation of Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness, is not an algorithm; rather it is a principle in Google Search Quality Guideline’s.

Google uses these three measures to validate the quality of those contents or pages. The quality determines where that web page will show up in the search engine result pages.

As said earlier, EAT is not a particular algorithm neither there’s a way nor any tool to calculate the score, in fact it is not any ranking factor. Then why do SEOs need to care about EAT.

Why Google Need E.A.T?

EAT is not a ranking factor in itself but most major ranking factors goes to EAT this is how EAT & various ranking factors are associated.

To understand this let’s take an example here, There is one teacher in a school who always say to her student that you should be a good student. For the entire month, she used to say this advice every single day. But students not bother on advice because they don’t know what actually good students sounds like or what it’s meant to be a good student.

So teacher got an idea and she instructed them to do these 3 things every day to be a good student.

1. Everybody should be on time in the school every day.
2. Every day you need to do your homework.
3. Every day you need to listen & obey your parents.

Now students got know clearly that they have to follow to do these 3 things to become a good student.

Similarly is the case in Google’s search algorithms through Google releases the updates to inform users from several years that website should have a quality content. But SEO’s can’t do this quality content because they simply don’t know which content is to be a quality content in the parameter of Google.

Google itself can’t explain the quality content’s parameters as there are millions of categories of website out there. Website are having content on different categories, niches and micro niches. So, eventually Google has decided to  set this E.A.T principle on which the websites need to be checked and that is

• Expertise
• Authority
• Trustworthiness

If these three things are on the content page then it is said to be a credible and up to the mark content for Google. And Google has successful to make the search results better to some extent.

As E.A.T is so important to this extent then a question comes to mind that Why E.A.T is not a ranking factor as it is an ideal solution?

The simple answer to this question is: No Need to make E.A.T a ranking factor and here’s why: Quality content can be a one of the Target for Google Search Engine results but it cannot be built as a tool. Like, again consider a school children example; if our imaginary teacher give marks to students on the basis of only being a good student then everyone is like sit idle with smile in classroom but may be they would not study, may be they wake up to late nights and don’t come school on time at next morning.

Similarly, it is not only enough to have a good content but also there should be way of assessment to measure that content on E.A.T parameters. Google slowly tweak its ranking signals in such a way that those websites who has already have a better ranking are becoming like good E.A.T pages content eventually.

So, Google indirectly matching its ranking factor with E.A.T principles instead of making E.A.T a ranking factor directly.  

Let’s now see what are the 3 major parts of E.A.T?

When we talk about the any website or Blog content, there are 3 parts:

1. Main Content
2. Writer of Main Content
3. Website

E.A.T also have a 3 parts:

1. Expertise
2. Authority
3. Trustworthiness

From given figure, Let’s simply understand that relation between Website content and E.A.T factors through possible association:

1. What is Expertise? How to get it?

Expertise is a writer or author of main content. Is he the expert of that field or not? Is he having a certified knowledge of that certain field? All these parameters comes under expertise factor. Now Google is trying to understand by adding the author page link in article type schema data that helps Google to focus more in writer or author. This author link can also be from the different website. So, if Google recognized the author as an expertise in his/her field then it would treat the content better.

2. Authority: What is authority & How to get it?

Authority is directly or indirectly related with all 3 content components. To know the authority of content, Google uses various signals but out of those signals the most important thing is reviews. Google not only find the genuine or natural written reviews but also look for the writer of specific review of content or page.

3. Trustworthiness: What is Trustworthiness and How to get it? 

When you have a situation whether you have to trust the person or not. It is possible by having the more and more information about him/her. Google also needs more detail info about that website or source where the contents represents from.

Conclusion:

So E.A.T is not only applicable on YMYL websites but also on websites with any other category. So, whether you’re content creator, SEO or website owner you should have to keep these principles while making your content strategy and publishing it over the internet.