After Reading This Guide, You’ll Understand 🡭
- History and background of EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
- Importance of EAT in SEO
- Key terms to know when dealing with EAT
Table of Contents
Background of The Story 🡭
Google algorithm constantly makes changes and updates to improve the user experience on their platform and prevent webmasters from manipulating the algorithm.
Years ago, you needed good content and backlinks to see results from search engines like Google.
But now, things have changed completely as webmasters started manipulating the search results with manual link building and poor quality (not trustworthy, misinformation, lack of accuracy) content.
This is where Google focused on going beyond content and backlinks and even UX.
Why EAT Is So Important To Google 🡭
In 2016, the rise of fake news was a big concern for Google. In fact, this spread of misinformation led to many unwanted controversies.
As a result, Google decided to focus on two things:
- Banning over 200 news publishers due to constantly publishing fake news
- Making their algorithm smart enough to identify and prevent the spread of future misinformation and fake news.
Primary Goals of Google Was To:
- Fight against Fake News
- Make Google a reliable & Trusted place for searchers
- Not Promoting Spam sites and content from any random guy/ brand
Quality Raters Guideline 🡭
First, Google made 100+ pages (first version) of PDF document (quality raters guideline) with extensive guidelines on how search engines should work.
Next, Google also hired more than 10,000 quality raters and asked them to give feedback on the current search engine results based on the quality raters guideline.
“The guidelines help make sure Search is returning relevant results from the most reliable sources available…
Raters will review the pages in each set of results and evaluate if the pages are a helpful match for the query based on our rater guidelines.
The ratings they provide don’t directly impact how a page or site appears in Search. Instead, they help us measure how well our systems are working to deliver great content.
” – Google.
In short, Google wanted to build a better and smarter algorithm that could prevent fake news or content from higher rankings (or even displaying the search) on the search.
Key Terms and Concepts 🡭
1. Quality Raters Guideline
First, Google made 100+ pages (first version) of PDF document (quality raters guideline) with extensive guidelines on how search engines should work.
Next, Google also hired more than 10,000 quality raters and asked them to give feedback on the current search engine results based on the quality raters guideline.
“The guidelines help make sure Search is returning relevant results from the most reliable sources available…
Raters will review the pages in each set of results and evaluate if the pages are a helpful match for the query based on our rater guidelines.
The ratings they provide don’t directly impact how a page or site appears in Search. Instead, they help us measure how well our systems are working to deliver great content.
” – Google.
In short, Google wanted to build a better and smarter algorithm that could prevent fake news or content from higher rankings (or even displaying the search) on the search.
2. EAT
Google says that “E-A-T is very important to evaluate content, authors, and websites.“
In other words, Google will now look at the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness of:
- Website/ online brand
- Main content
- Content creator/ author
3. YMYL
Google’s definition of YMYL:
Some types of pages or topics could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. We call such pages “Your Money Your Life” pages or YMYL.
It is important to know that EAT information is highly important for sites that fall under the YMYL category.
For instance, if you’re dealing with a health-related website, simply creating good quality content isn’t enough to rank higher and earn Google’s trust.
Here’s an example of different YMYL categories along with some example websites:
Keep in mind:
Even if your website doesn’t fall under the health and finance-related categories, you still need to consider the importance of building EAT of your website/ online brand.
Surely, Google will give much more importance to the EAT information of a health-related website than a niche website about professional photography.
Here’s a visual representation to help you understand the importance of EAT:
[What YMYL websites should do for EAT will be discussed in part 2 and part 3.]
This Is What EAT Can Do A YMYL Site 🡭
BuyPhentermineOnline247is an example of a YMYL site getting significantly affected by the EAT updated in Google’s algorithm.
The website’s organic monthly visits went from 70k to just 700 visits per month.
There is also a useful study by Lily Ray (SEO professional expertise in EAT) that showcases the impact of Google’s algorithm on YML sites:
(Link to the study is given below)
Now that you know the importance and concepts of EAT, it is now time to do the actual work – which is performing an EAT audit to find issues and scope of opportunities [Part 2]
EAT Lessons 🡭
- Part 1. E-A-T: Beyond Content, Links, And UX
- Part 2. E-A-T: Beyond Content, Links, And UX
- Part 3. E-A-T: Beyond Content, Links, And UX
