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Some podcast episodes that may help
References
For a while, my team documented every single time Google discussed E-A-T. These may help:
July 2020
Google published documentation on how to rank in Discover, stating that “Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Those looking to improve E-A-T can consider some of the same questions we encourage site owners to consider for Search. While Search and Discover are different, the overall principles for E-A-T as it applies to content within them are similar.”
June 2020
Great tips from Lily Ray on improving EAT for your authors.
May 2020
The May core update, released on May 4, 2020 appeared to once again reward websites with strong E-A-T. Something we noticed was that in many cases, sites that demonstrated real life expertise on a topic were rewarded. An example given in the article linked to, of a site that did well with this update would be an affiliate site that instead of just posting other people’s reviews, actually used the products themselves before publishing their review.
April 2020
Lily Ray wrote a great article, published on SEJ that will answer all of your questions about schema as it applies to your authors.
March 2020
Bill Slawski wrote an article for Search Engine Journal describing how Google can tell whether your content is expert written and the role this could play in determining E-A-T.
February 2020
This Bill Slawski article tells us that Google could be using something called Website Representation Vectors as a way to help measure E-A-T.
September 2019
Marie’s Whiteboard Friday with Moz discusses E-A-T and the Quality Raters Guidelines.
Google announces their partnership with the Mayo Clinic. This is interesting as this could impact health SERPs. It could be possible that Google is mandating only trustworthy health site, which aligns with our theory on how Google could measure scientific consensus and whether alternative health sites could be suppressed.
Marie sits down with Barry Schwartz to discuss algo updates, E-A-T, and penalties (video)
August 2019
Listen to Marie discuss the June Core Update with Authority Labs! (video)
Catch Marie talk about E-A-T, the Quality Raters Guidelines and more on her recent Digital Rage Podcast.
A leaked document shows more evidence of Google trying to algorithmically fight against sites contradicting scientific consensus (which in our opinion is what Google is trying to do with health sites in the June 3, 2019 Google update). If you’re a paid subscriber to our SEO newsletter, then you can get some of our detailed opinions on how this could be suppressing sites that contradict scientific consensus.
John Mueller talks about how Google tries to look at E-A-T for medical sites. John confirmed that they do look at information such as the author, the site overall, and reviewers partially through the content. He also recommends that you find an approach primarily for users, so it might not be best to hide it in structured data.
Google’s blog covers the topic: What webmasters should know about Google’s core updates. MHC was fortunate enough to earn a link from Google (to this very page) which provided additional reading for webmasters.
July 2019
From Google: Would a federal medical centre benefit from adding doctor author bios? John Mueller says if the work has been written or reviewed by an expert, it makes sense to indicate this. Here is his exact response: “I I think that’s something that you probably have answered already in that if you’re providing information on your webpage and it is kind of checked or written/created by someone who has a lot of knowledge on that topic then that’s something I would definitely highlight.”
Are you a health/medical site with content written without relative medical expertise? You can improve your content, remove or, or noindex it. Should you want to improve it, John says that having a medical expert on hand is a good idea.
Author E-A-T: It is possible to rank using a pseudonym? John Mueller once again hints that yes it is possible as Google’s algo’s likely do not judge the realness of author names used. He also noted the complexities with understanding a name which was a rather fascinating read.
How established are you in your niche and what are people saying about you? Google may be looking at prominence and what others are saying about you.
John Mueller discusses authorship and E-A-T in relation to using pseudonyms.
New info from a Google employee on the power of authority. This article from The Guardian says due to the rise in US school shootings, they’ve tweaked the algorithm to allow for adjustments to authority.
June 2019
John Mueller says in a Help Hangout that if you’ve seen a drop and you’re worried about E-A-T, you should work on increasing overall site quality.
Google rewards reputable reporting says the Economist. The study reveals that Google does indeed assess E-A-T on a site.
May 2019
Google confirms that they worked on improving medical search results in 2018. John also confirms that E-A-T is an important component to work on for medical sites.
Pedros Dias provides a great indication via Twitter regarding what composes quality. Check this out!
Building Trust for Your Service Area Business (article).
Possibly a minor quality update on May 9, 2019 . Many of our clients who have been working on E-A-T related changes saw slight increases on May 9. However a few saw slight decreases. We think that this was potentially a refresh of some sort in which Google re-assessed E-A-T signals for many sites.
Google’s new portal for How News Works (+touches on how E-A-T is a factor). Basically it says, “…our systems are designed to identify signals that can help determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness on a given topic, based on feedback from Search raters. Those signals can include whether other people value the source for similar queries or whether other prominent websites on the subject link to the story.”
Interesting note from John Mueller in a Hangout. John says that it’s not impossible for a distributor to outrank a manufacturer. It boils down to value, quality, technical standpoint, and authority!
Great E-A-T reminder courtesy of Lily Ray: if you Google your “company’s name + scam” and you see legitimate results on page 1, this can impact your organic performance. Consider engaging in a reputation management program (and obviously do some soul searching to see why customers consider you a scam)!
Bill Slawski discusses Trust Metrics at Google (article).
April 2019
Re: the March core update: John Mueller says to definitely check out the Panda questions from 2011 (more guidance on building high-quality sites). He also suggests that webmasters read the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) to understand what Google deems high versus low quality. This was such in important tip, John mentioned just days later that once again you should gather feedback from real users and read the Panda questions.
In a hangout, John says that for new sites, you won’t be an expert from day one. There’s no magic trick to appear to be an expert in Google’s eyes. Just work hard to have more expert-level content over time. Be an authority on a topic.
John Mueller regarding the March Core Update said, on the one hand, technical SEO issues are always smart to fix, but if the overall view of the site makes it hard to tell you’re an expert, then that can play a role as well
Advanced Search Summit tip: The website reputation matters. Google looks at words that co-appear with your brand name
March 2019
Danny Sullivan preannounced a significant core quality update (March 12, 2019) which later was coined by Google as the “March Core Quality Update”. I wrote an article for Search Engine Land that provided many examples of sites that saw noticeable improvements with this update and also included the types of changes that these sites made).
February 2019
A possible small quality update on February 27, 2019 provided nice improvements to clients of our were working on E-A-T related changes. This was likely a general quality update.
Stone Temple (now part of Perficient Digital) released an excellent article titled ‘Why Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines Matter to Content Marketers – Here’s Why #203’. The article clearly lays out why you should be paying attention to E-A-T.
Google releases a whitepaper which basically confirms that E-A-T is incredibly important.
A possible small quality update on February 16, 2019 resulted in many of our clients who were working on quality improvements see small positive changes. In our opinion, we feel that this was likely a re-assessment of E-A-T for many sites.
Gary Illyes in his Reddit AMA says that E-A-T is connected to links (although states that that is an oversimplification).
Gary Illyes in his Reddit AMA says that relevance is something they are constantly trying to figure out and that is evolving rapidly. However he references the QRGs twice stating that that is the process through which they evaluate if the algorithm is doing what they want it to do.
January 2019
January 31, 2019 was no a suspected update date, but some large sites saw major drops (for example, Irs.com (not .gov)) on this date. We think that this could reflect Google’s assessment of the “T” (Trust) in E-A-T.
John Mueller says it’s hard to measure author E-A-T algorithmically. A lot of things are soft quality factors that Google tries to figure out.
December 2018
Part 1 of 3 of Marie’s E-A-T webinar is available. It covers the basics of E-A-T. What is it? Is Google using it algorithmically? And it wraps up with audience questions. Check out our video and transcript to see it in full.
An algorithm update from December 4-6, 2018 (likely a mild quality update) resulted in further drops for many sites with previous E-A-T related issues. There was no obvious pattern as to what was addressed with this update but we felt there was a link component to it based on the fact that many clients who we recently filed disavows for saw gains.
November 2018
An algorithm update from November 23-26, 2018 — which we suspect was a core quality update — resulted in many gains for our clients who had been working hard to improve their E-A-T.
October 2018
An algorithm update on October 31, 2018 appeared to be a significant core quality update. Many sites that saw drops on August 1, 2018 or September 27, 2018 saw further drops on this day. We saw a couple of clients who have worked hard to improve “trust” (the “T” in E-A-T) make nice improvements.
John Mueller reinforces that we should be doing more to promote author E-A-T including adding author schema.
Having a physical address isn’t always a sign of trust. It is often used this way for pure eCommerce sites and if your top competitors all have a valid address listed on their site.
September 2018
Google confirmed that an algorithm update but called it “small”. On the dates of September 24-27, 2018 (and continuing into October) we saw some really significant changes in sites we monitor. It looked to be a tweak on the August 1 “Medic” update. Danny Sullivan of Google later confirmed that this was a broad core quality update and that it would roll out into October.
Google confirms in a blog post that authority is a ranking factor, saying, “For starters, the authority of a web page is now a more important signal in the ranking.”
John Mueller said in a hangout that an author bio can be helpful to include on your site. Specifically he said, ““Often times, it makes it a little bit easier for users to understand the context of whatever you’ve written. If you have a link to an author profile that shows you really know what you’re talking about, you go to conferences, you’ve written about this is different places on the web. This gives them more trust in your content on the web. All of these things might be reasons why you might have an author profile page you link from your content.”
August 2018
John Mueller made some comments in a hangout about Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines and how they relate to author E-A-T. He talks about how E-A-T is a factor rather than seeing this explicitly to rank your website.
There was a massive August 1 update likely related to E-A-T. Many sites in the health/wellness/medical space were heavily impacted, and was thus nicknamed the Medic Update, however this was not the only industry to be affected. There are also reports of non-YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) sites being affected as well. In my opinion, this is the biggest update we have had in a long time.
July 2018
Great E-A-T idea from Marie RE: vet open house day.
June 2018
A great E-A-T developing idea from Marie inspired by Lululemon.
Marie suggests, following a case study, that social mentions can increase your E-A-T.
Link building tip for E-A-T inspired by Domino’s filling potholes.
May 2018
There was a quality update. At MHC, we saw some clients who had been working on improving E-A-T see nice gains.
Can social mentions improve E-A-T? In this newsletter episode, we give an example of a brand that found a way to make a crazy product go viral. We do believe that large amounts of positive social mentions can help improve Google’s assessment of your brand’s authority.
April 2018
An algorithm update on April 16, 2018 may have been a tweak to the way in which Google algorithmically assesses E-A-T. We saw improvements for clients’ sites that had been working on E-A-T improvement.
A new Google patent, written about by Bill Slawski talks about a new way in which Google can calculate PageRank so that link equity only passes through trusted pages. Most likely, those trusted pages are pages that have good E-A-T.
March 2018
An algorithm update on March 7-9 was confirmed by Google. Google confirmed that this update was primarily about relevancy. Many sites that were affected had E-A-T issues.
Customer testimonials can help improve Google’s assessment of Trust for your site. Here is a great article by Joel Klettke on how to get high quality testimonials.
Gary Illyes from Google said at Pubcon Austin that Google’s algorithmic assessment of E-A-T is largely based on links and mentions on authoritative sites.
December 2017
A significant algorithm update on December 26, 2017 affected sites with E-A-T issues.
An update on December 12, 2017 occurred which appeared to be a significant algorithm update, dubbed the “Maccabees update”. We have noticed that many sites that were hit were sites that were hit with quality updates, and believe that a big component of this update dealt with E-A-T.
November 2017
Google started showing new information in knowledge panels to show a publisher’s awards, and reviewed claims. This shows us that Google can determine information about awards (which speaks to trust) algorithmically.
October 2017
An algorithm update on October 28-29, 2017 seemed to affect sites with E-A-T issues.
An algorithm update on October 8, 2017 happened. We saw nice improvements in a couple of clients’ sites who had worked to improve the E-A-T of individual authors.
September 2017
An algorithm update on September 6-8, 2017 happened. We saw good improvements for a site that had been working at improving E-A-T.
July 2017
In my newsletter I shared about how you can determine what industry Google thinks you are in. It is then important to make sure you have E-A-T for that industry. For example, if Google has you classified as a medical site, but you have no authors with medical experience, this could make ranking in your space difficult.
March 2017
Fred update (March 7-8) – This was a major quality update. It appears to have affected sites that existed primarily for SEO reasons. I also think that at this time Google tweaked the algorithm to reward sites with good E-A-T (Experience, Authority and Trust).
February 2017
Large core algorithm update. This update affected a lot of sites. I saw several sites that I think dropped in rankings because of a lack of E-A-T (Experience, Authority and Trust).
About Marie
Dr. Marie Haynes is recognized as a leader in the SEO industry and has 10+ years of experience helping businesses of all sizes improve their site quality. She is a frequent contributor to Moz.com and Search Engine Watch and a regular speaker at Pubcon and SMX. Marie was named one of the top five industry influencers by Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, and constantly stays up to date with changes to Google’s algorithms to the benefit of her clients. To contact Marie, visit the contact page. For media Inquiries, click here.