E-E-A-T: The Google Search Quality Rating Standard

Google always updates its quality assessment guidelines to serve its users the best search results. The last update released was about E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T is an update that is part of the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) on a Google search.

Previously, this concept was known as E-A-T. The addition of E to this concept is an update that Google introduced on December 15, 2022.

Understanding this update is important for SEO activities. For that, you need to listen to the complete information in this guide.

What is Google E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T is a concept that was recently introduced by Google in its newest Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG).

The concept consists of experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. These four aspects are the main things that are assessed by Google from content on the internet.

Experience is an assessment benchmark based on the level of experience of the content creator.

Here, content quality testers are made based on several factors, such as product use, visits to places in person, or real stories from sources.

Typically, the more experienced a content creator on a specific topic is, the more sought after the content.

This is related to the purpose of Google, which acts as a search engine to help users find relevant information.

In the process, internet users will also judge Google as a reliable source of information.

Whether it's looking for information or just a short answer, users can rely on Google Search with any search query.

For this reason, the Search Rate Guidelines or Quality Rate Guidelines are updated from time to time to improve the quality of Google searches.

What's the Difference Between E-E-A-T and E-A-T?

When it comes to content evaluation by Google, experience is the most noticeable factor.

The difference between E-E-A-T and E-A-T is the experience aspect with an emphasis on accurate sources of information for useful content for readers.

According to Google, the experiential aspect of this content is meant to provide new insights into the various ways to present quality information to users.

The more accurate the information obtained based on aspects of experience, the more reliable and profitable the content will be for internet users.

Content that follows Google's quality guidelines will also rank higher among creators with less experience.

E-E-A-T on YMYL Content

As you know, the E-A-T concept applies to content that discusses YMYL (Your Money, Your Life). Google E-E-A-T still uses the same system.

What is new here is the distinction between experience and expertise. So, what makes the two different in evaluating the quality of YMYL content?

YMYL is content that discusses crucial matters in everyday life, such as health and finance.

Therefore, the information presented on this topic must be accurate and adapted from credible sources and curated by experts so as not to harm readers.

Experience refers to the experience that content creators have. The meaning of experience here is insight gained from daily activities or expertise in a field.

Content creators can get this experience from events in their lives. This is an aspect of experience that Google pays attention to.

For example, content around product reviews will be more credible if the authors have used them directly.

This logic is in line with Google's experience concept, which emphasizes that experiences from primary information sources can present content that is useful to users.

To prove the legitimacy of this experience, content creators also need to include evidence of the information written in the content.

Content Evaluation Standard Based on E-E-A-T

After understanding what E-E-A-T is and its role in maintaining the quality of YMYL content, you also need to know how Google evaluates content based on these principles.

The assessment of content quality is based on the score given by the raters. This time, we will discuss the four levels of assessment based on Google Search guidelines as follows:

Lowest

Google's content rating guidelines are used as a standard to maintain the quality of information searches and the results displayed in the SERPs.

This is intended to avoid content that is of less quality.  Here, Google determines that the content of the information cannot be trusted.

Google can see these aspects from the Main Content (MC) of the page. If the score is very low (lowest), then that page will not occupy the top position in the SERP.

Lacking

On the other hand, content that is rated as lacking has a low level of expertise as judged by Google quality raters.

This low score can be caused by the following factors:

• Content creators don't have enough experience to create content around a certain topic. For example, a restaurant review written by someone who has never visited the restaurant.
• Content creators don't have expertise in the topics covered on a page. For example, articles about photography that are not written by professional photographers or experts in their field.
• Websites or content creators are not authoritative or trusted sources on a topic. As an example, the annual tax data obtained from automotive websites.
• The page or website cannot be trusted based on its business niche. For example, e-commerce website pages that provide minimum information about the products and services offered thereby confusing users

High

Content that has a high score means that it has information that can be trusted and accounted for. Given that the quality of this content is related to experience, Google prioritizes content that comes from direct experience.

As previously mentioned, information in content needs to involve people who do have experience or expertise in their field.

Therefore, for content to get a high score, you need to write information that is accurate and useful to users.

Content written by a food critic, for example, will be more credible and present distinct information than content written by an amateur blog writer. 

Very High

Above "high" is "very high". The highest score is given to pages that present the highest quality content among other content.

To get this highest score, a website must have a high Domain Authority.

This score can also be obtained if the content creator has a unique authority value. Usually, pages with this quality are often used as the main source of information or go-to sources by other websites.

It can be concluded that websites that are rich in experience and expertise have the potential to get the highest scores in certain niches.

That's all the information we can deliver about the guide to Google E-E-A-T and its role in evaluating content on the SERP.

Websites and content that have a high score can potentially experience a ranking increase. Therefore, it is very important to pay attention to Google's search quality assessment guidelines.

Understanding updates to Google's algorithm can help you improve your SEO strategy. It can help you see that the page ranking doesn't decrease due to the quality that is considered to be below standard.

To help you solve the optimization problem effectively, you can use SEO services from specialists in their fields. That way, your website can be monitored for its development and performance with a measurable and precise strategy.