Focusing on EAT is not a substitute for technical SEO or other SEO measures
By Rank Jacker on July 22, 2022
Google faces the constant challenge of filtering out from a gigantic pool of millions of websites of the highest quality, and it best helps search engine users.
EAT is a concept that significantly helps the search engine to assess the quality of websites.
In this article, you will find out what it is exactly, for which websites this factor is important and how optimization targeted for EAT can be.
Since the core update of August 2018 at the latest, EAT has penetrated the broad mass of search engine optimizers.
At that time, unlike Penguin or Panda, for example, Google did not punish bad websites but rather rewarded good websites. Namely, those whom she considered credible and trustworthy.
Because it initially looked like the update would only affect websites from the healthcare industry, it was initially called the Medic Update.
Not uninteresting marginal information because EAT plays a bigger role for some industries than for others.
However, all websites that are potentially capable of changing their visitors’ physical, psychological, or financial well-being were affected.
EAT is an acronym that stands for the following three terms:
The abbreviation stands for a variety of features that help Google to assess the quality of a website.
The most important document connected with EAT is the Search Quality Rater Guidelines from Google (also called Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines).
The almost 170-page PDF is aimed at the 10,000 or so quality raters employed by Google worldwide. The guidelines give clear guidelines on how web pages and websites are to be analyzed and assessed.
The acronym EAT no fewer than 135 times in the publicly available document. A pretty clear indication of how important expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are for the search engine.
Nevertheless, EAT is not a ranking factor, even if relatively well-known and reputable websites sometimes claim otherwise.
The whitepaper “ Fighting disinformation across our products ” (2019) roughly explains how EAT is assessed. There it is clearly stated:
“The resulting ratings do not affect the ranking of any individual website, but they do help us benchmark the quality of our results, which in turn allows us to build algorithms that globally recognize results that meet high-quality criteria.“
And in a post about the Core Updates on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, says:
“It’s important to understand that search raters have no control over how page rank. Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms. Rather, we use them as a restaurant that might get feedback cards from diners. The feedback helps us know if our systems seem to be working.“
EAT is therefore not a direct ranking factor, but it does have an indirect influence on the position in the search results.
Google uses the results of the Search Quality Raters to derive patterns and adapt the algorithms.
In principle, the criteria specified in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines apply to all websites. However, it is in the nature of things that, for example, expertise and credibility are not the same for all websites.
In particular, websites that are not for information but for entertainment need to be judged less sharply by the raters with regard to EAT.
It is relatively unimportant who the author is and how well he knows the subject with a joke page.
“For all other pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT) is very important.” (Source: Search Quality Rater Guidelines)“
On the other hand, there are industries where they must convey well-founded and independent content that can be trusted without hesitation. Google calls them YMYL pages.
YMYL stands for “Your Money Your Life”.
This includes all websites that could possibly influence the personal life situation of the users. Both positive and negative.
The YMYL pages include:
These websites deal with sensitive subject areas or have an increased risk potential because they process users’ data.
In the worst-case scenario, false information on a medical website could be fatal. Speculative investment tips lead to financial ruin on a stock exchange site.
Google, therefore, sets particularly strict standards for YMYL pages. EAT is weighted more heavily here and rated higher.
It is not without reason that Google is the search engine with the world’s largest market share. We all use this search engine because of the search results, which obviously meet our needs better than those of the competition.
The ultimate goal of Google search is to present its users with the best search results for their search queries. This is the only way that Google can defend its market power.
The search engine is the basis of Google’s success story, even if every offer no longer has something to do with the core business. But Google generates a large part of its valuable data about us through search.
Delivering the best search results is anything but an altruistic benefit but ultimately a win-win situation.
In addition, there is the enormous responsibility that such a global corporation like Alphabet has. The garage days are long gone.
In the worst case, the spread of false information can not only destroy individual livelihoods, it can even lead to global catastrophes. Google would also like to prevent this in its interest and use EAT to identify and limit risks.
The search engine is constantly faced with the challenge of filtering out the millions of websites that are most relevant to the respective search query. With expertise, authority and trustworthiness, Google can very well assess how high-quality, secure, and reliable a website and its content are. EAT fits perfectly into the philosophy of Google.
Notice!
“One of the primary goals of Google is to protect its users from websites that misinform or deceive visitors, cause harm, and spread hatred. The Quality Raters are required to assign such websites to the lowest quality class. After all, Google also has to pay attention to its user experience in order to satisfy its users.“
Understanding content semantically is no longer a real challenge for Google today.
However, checking its accuracy and truth content is currently still impossible for an algorithm. Google, therefore, relies on a large number of signals that provide information about the relevance of the content and the authority of a website.
Gary Illyes, the webmaster trends analyst at Google, said a few weeks after this tweet at PubCon in Las Vegas that the content’s correctness is a ranking factor, especially for YMYL sites.
This was also confirmed to emphasize that this was technically but not so easy to measure, such as the Page Speed.
The Quality Rater Guidelines “does not say how the algorithm evaluates the results, but they show how the algorithm should proceed.” EAT is, therefore, primarily a concept for identifying high-quality websites based on numerous different signals.
These signals are measured by many different baby algorithms that have been incorporated into the algorithm with the core updates because Google reaches its technical limits when assessing expertise, relevance, and trustworthiness.
The Search Quality Raters (also Search Quality Evaluators) play an outstanding role. Your task is to evaluate websites according to the quality criteria clearly defined in the guidelines, of which EAT is not the only one.
After the analysis, the Quality Rater classifies each website in one of the following quality classes (Overall Page Quality Rating):
In the guidelines, Google explains in detail – also with examples – what characterizes a website of the respective quality level.
Webmasters and SEOs and web designers, web developers, and copywriters can learn a lot from this. The document is therefore required reading for anyone who wants to contribute to good and successful websites.
Tip!
“Anyone who does search engine optimization should be aware of the existence of quality raters at all times.
Google not only sends the web crawler over but also flesh and blood employees.
It not only helps to be aware of this but also to take the perspective of the Google employee in order to constantly work on your own website.
Because, unlike the crawler, a quality rater does not come back so quickly. A poor quality class can therefore lead to problems in the long term.“
Notice!
“Google cannot technically measure EAT as a whole and is therefore looking for clues that speak for quality with many baby algorithms. In addition, Search Quality Raters carry out manual assessments.
As a result, there is no EAT score that expresses expertise, authority, and trustworthiness with an absolute number. Even if you read about such a score again and again.“
The guidelines also provide information about what influences expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. As is often the case, the most important influencing factor is the content, more precisely the main content (MC).
Definition:
“Main content is any part of the page that directly helps it achieve its purpose.
With the exception of User Generated Content, webmasters have direct control over the MC.
MC can include text, images, videos, page functions (e.g. calculator, games), or user-generated content such as videos, reviews, articles, and so on that users have added or uploaded to the page. ” (Source: Search Quality Rater Guidelines)“
In YMYL pages, the correctness, completeness, and comprehensibility of the main content are decisive.
Supplementary content, which “contributes to a good user experience on the site, but does not directly help the site achieve its purpose,” is differentiated from the MC. Google emphasizes that SC is also important because it can help a page achieve its purpose better and add to the overall experience.
In addition, advertisements/monetization (ads) are delimited. Whereby Google states that the “presence or absence of ads is not in itself a reason for a high or low-quality rating.
Without advertising and monetization, some websites could not exist because it costs money to maintain a website and produce quality content.”
Anything else would be surprising when you consider that Google earns a lot from many ads. However, those who overdo it with advertising or no longer provide objective information because they are too dependent on advertising income will also lose credibility and trust.
Ultimately, both main content and supplementary content, as well as advertisements/monetization, have an impact on EAT. However, their influence is weighted differently.
“MC is (or should be!) The reason the page exists. The quality of the MC plays a very large role in the Page Quality rating of a webpage. ” (Source: Search Quality Rater Guidelines)“
Now that we have dealt extensively with what Google understands by expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which websites it particularly affects, and how it is analyzed, some optimization measures come to mind.
Others can be deduced by taking a closer look at the winners and losers of the latest core updates and their websites.
Related Read: E-A-T & Link Building: A Guide To Evaluating Prospects
For optimization, it is important to understand that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness apply to the website and the author or authors because, without trust in the producers, there is no trust in the content.
That is why it is always important to keep an eye on both dimensions.
EAT is on everyone’s lips and will continue to gain importance in the future. The most important learnings at a glance:
Focusing on EAT is not a substitute for technical SEO or other SEO measures. It’s extra work that pays off in the long run.
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