It has been a long time since the debate of E-E-A-T being a Ranking Factor started. But before we dive into this pool of confusion, let us first understand what E-E-A-T is.

Origination of E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness But the original version of this acronym was E-A-T in which the other ‘E’ that stands for experience was added in 2022

E-A-T was introduced by Google in 2014 to the Google Search Quality Rater guidelines in order to help review the quality of search results by human Raters, also known as quality raters. The addition of the Expertise ‘E’ was to make these results more reliable. 

The Google Search Quality Raters guidelines have defined these 4 components of E-E-A-T as:

• Experience: The quality of the content depends on how well-experienced the reviewer of the product is, which means the amount of personal experience the reviewer has with the product determines the quality of the content. For example, A person reviewing a restaurant who has, in fact, visited the place and has tried the food there is writing content about it and providing authentic photos and videos will be considered as quality content, rather than a person who has not visited the restaurant.
• Expertise: Experience and expertise might appear to be the same, but they are two different things. Quality raters must focus on the author’s knowledge or expertise about the topic in addition to their qualification, which determines the credibility of the content. Like a person talking about fashion with expertise in the same field would make the content much more credible.
• Authoritativeness: It is defined by the reputation that you hold in your industry. The overall reputation of the creator, content and website helps the quality raters to review your work.

For example, you go for Zee News’s news portal whenever you want to know the details of any incident because Zee News is prominent for its authenticity. Now, their authenticity is reviewed by the quality raters, which helps Zee to be on top of quality search results.

• Trustworthy: One of the most important components of E-E-A-T. Is your content written by someone reliable? Is it accurate and factual? The websites should take these factors into account in order to match the standards of E-E-A-T. 

The purpose behind E-E-A-T is to set a benchmark or standard of quality that should be maintained by the websites in order to appear in search results. It is not a ranking factor but a concept or criteria that Google uses to appraise the quality of the website.