The Google concept of E-A-T, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness is a huge subject. In this post I’m going to give you an overview of it, in the time it takes me to drink a coffee. Those of you who know me, know that I smash a coffee quick so let’s get straight to it.
Google has a team of thousands called Google’s Search Quality Raters. Their job is simple but extremely important. They are charged with reviewing and ranking websites on Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.
It’s important to understand that a positive or negative rating by a Quality Rater will not directly impact your position in search results. The results from the Quality Raters are checked against the algorithm produced results and changes to the algorithm is made. Effectively making the Quality Raters results influence the rankings of every site.
There is a 168-page document outlining exactly how the Quality Raters work. It’s their manual. There are two metrics that are tested:
- Needs Met
- Page Quality
Ok I’m halfway through my coffee. I need to push.
Needs Met. What does it mean? It means intent. The intent of the query. Did the page answer the query, how well did it answer the query?
Page Quality. There are several factors that make up the Page Quality rating. The sections of a website can be classified into three main categories:
- Main Content
- Supplement Content
- Ads
The ease of access and volume of the Main Content in relation to the Needs Met metric play a major part in the Page Quality calculations. The Supplement Content also assists this calculation based on whether the need is met and how easily the supplement content can be accessed.
I have enough coffee left for a quick example.
We have two companies, Company A and Company B, who offer the same services.
Company A has a website that just has an about page, services they offer and contact page.
Company B has a website that has an about page, services they offer, contact page, and regularly publishes resources (blog posts) which support the services they offer. They also provide links to these resources on their individual service pages in a clear well formatted way.
The query generated from the Google search was met by both Company A and Company B however Company B had a higher Page Quality rank and was able to demonstrate Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness to a much higher level through its site structure and supplement content.
Quality Raters would give Company B a much higher ranking and what we know about how Google’s algorithm works Company B if not already, would feature much higher up in the search results.
I’m not going to lie; I finished my coffee mid-way through the example.
So, wrapping things up, Google Search Quality Raters are important as they effectively audit the AI algorithm to make sure the Google E-A-T concept is working properly.