What is E-E-A-T?
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Google uses the idea in its search rater guidelines to describe quality. It is not a ranking factor you can mark up, and it is not an LLM setting. For AI visibility, it is a reminder to show real experience and sources a person can check.
Why it matters for AI visibility
Assistants prefer passages that look like they come from someone who has done the work, because those passages are safer to repeat. E-E-A-T matters as a writing and sourcing standard: name the author when a person is accountable, show first-hand detail, cite the data you rely on, and make the business behind the site identifiable. It does not mean stuffing biographies into every paragraph or adding a fake “reviewed by” line. Trust is also negative space: no invented numbers, no undisclosed sponsorships, no claims the product cannot support. Third-party corroboration, which is earned media and consistent entity information, is part of authoritativeness. You still have to measure citations directly. A page that demonstrates experience can remain uncited, and a thin page can be cited because a retriever selected it. Use E-E-A-T to decide what to publish. Use the citation log to see what engines selected.
Example
A comparison written by someone who implemented both tools, with screenshots they took and limits they hit, shows experience. The same comparison with anonymous superlatives and no method does not. Only a later prompt check shows whether either page was cited.
Related terms
Source authority is how often answers already cite a domain. Topical authority is depth across a subject. Earned media is independent corroboration. E-E-A-T is the quality language that ties those ideas to whether a reader should believe the page.