---
title: "E-E-A-T Explained: What We Found on 218 Ranking Pages"
id: "22250"
type: "post"
slug: "eeat"
published_at: "2026-11-01T00:00:00+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-11-01T00:00:00+00:00"
url: "https://uprisedigital.com.au/blog/eeat/"
markdown_url: "https://uprisedigital.com.au/blog/eeat.md"
excerpt: "What E-E-A-T really means, what Google says about it, and what 218 Australian law, building, SEO and money pages show about who actually ranks and gets cited."
taxonomy_category:
  - "AI SEO"
  - "Blogs"
---

[Skip to content](#content)
- November 1, 2026
- [By Lakshane Fonseka](https://uprisedigital.com.au/author/lakshane/)

# E-E-A-T Explained: What We Found on 218 Ranking Pages

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## Contents

[https://uprisedigital.com.au/author/lakshane/](https://uprisedigital.com.au/author/lakshane/)

[Lakshane Fonseka](https://uprisedigital.com.au/author/lakshane/)

Lakshane is the founder of Uprise Digital, a Melbourne performance marketing and AI search agency. Under his lead, Uprise has worked with more than 100 Australian businesses across solar, construction, legal and professional services. Before Uprise he worked at Accenture and KPMG and ran campaigns for Kathmandu and Jurlique. [See his background and research](https://uprisedigital.com.au/author/lakshane/)

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakshane-fonseka-a3857b149/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakshane-fonseka-a3857b149/)

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust (often written as trustworthiness). It is the framework Google’s human search quality raters use to judge whether a page deserves to be trusted, and Google says it is not a specific ranking factor on its own. Instead, its systems use “a mix of factors” that line up with it, and give that more weight on topics like law, money and safety.

That leaves business owners with a practical question: do the things people add “for EEAT”, such as author bylines, bio pages, dates and ABNs, actually show up more on the pages that win? On 24 September 2026 we checked. We ran 20 Australian questions about law, building, SEO and money through Google and Google AI Mode, then read 218 of the pages that ranked or were cited. The short answer is that those signals barely separated winners from the rest.

**Key findings**

- Business and publisher pages cited by Google AI Mode had a named author 42% of the time. Top 10 pages it did not cite: 39%. Author bios, credentials, dates and author schema showed similar tiny gaps, some the other way.
- Top 3 results did not carry more of these signals than positions 4 to 10. Only 29% of top 3 pages showed a visible date, against 46% lower down.
- 10 of the 20 number one results were government pages, and none of the 37 government pages we read had a named author. Reddit took 4 more of the number one spots.
- Law pages named an author only 31% of the time, and money pages 11%, against 73% for SEO pages.
- The clearest gaps: cited pages more often showed a street address (58% vs 41%) and linked to government, legal or university sources (42% vs 31%). With 172 pages, even these could be chance.

None of this means E-E-A-T is a myth. It means the checklist version of it (add a byline, add a date, done) is not what Google is rewarding. The pages that won were the ones people already trust: the court, the tax office, the super fund, the firm with a real address. Building that kind of trust for a small business is slower work, and it is the core of how we approach [SEO for Australian businesses](/seo/)
.

## What is E-E-A-T?

The framework comes from Google’s [Search Quality Rater Guidelines](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)
, the manual Google gives to the people it pays to rate search results. The version we read is dated 11 September 2025. It is made up of four parts, and that “the most important member at the center of the E-E-A-T family is Trust.”

| Letter | What the guidelines ask raters to consider | What it looks like on a small business site |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Experience | Whether the creator has “the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic” | Photos from your own jobs, real timelines, real prices you have charged, what went wrong and how you fixed it |
| Expertise | Whether the creator has “the necessary knowledge or skill for the topic” | A named lawyer, builder or adviser, with their practising certificate, licence or qualification |
| Authoritativeness | Whether the creator or website “is known as a go-to source for the topic” | Industry association membership, awards, press, other sites citing you |
| Trust | Whether the page is “accurate, honest, safe, and reliable” | Correct information, clear business details, honest reviews, no bait-and-switch |

Source: Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines, section 3.4, version dated 11 September 2025.

The guidelines also explain why Trust sits in the middle: “untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert, or Authoritative they may seem.” Their example is a financial scam run by an expert scammer.

### Why it matters more for law, money and building

Google calls topics that “could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society” Your Money or Your Life, or YMYL. A divorce question, a capital gains tax question and a question about building approvals all fit. The guidelines say pages on clear YMYL topics “require the most scrutiny”, and that for giving information or advice on them “a high level of expertise may be required for the page to be trustworthy.” They also allow that someone sharing their own experience of a hard situation can still rate highly, as long as the content is “consistent with well-established expert consensus.”

## Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?

Not directly, and Google has said so in plain words. Its Search Central page on [creating helpful, reliable, people-first content](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content)
 states: “While E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful.” The same page says its systems give that kind of content “even more weight” on YMYL topics.

The raters themselves do not move rankings either. Google’s [overview of the rater programme](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/hsw-sqrg.pdf)
 says their ratings “alone will not directly affect how a particular webpage, website, or result appears in Google Search.” Raters are used to check whether Google’s ranking changes are working, a bit like a taste test for a recipe the chef is already cooking.

For AI search, Google’s guidance on [AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)
 says “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” So the same quality thinking applies. We looked at what that means in practice in our guide on [how to show up in Google AI Mode](/blog/how-to-show-up-in-google-ai-mode/)
, and our [AI SEO services](/ai-seo/)
 are built on the same idea.

### What Google actually asks you to check

The helpful content page gives site owners a simple frame: “Who, How, and Why”. On the “Who”, it asks: “Is it self-evident to your visitors who authored your content? Do pages carry a byline, where one might be expected? Do bylines lead to further information about the author or authors involved?” It adds: “We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it.” Those questions are what we tested.

## What we tested on 218 Australian pages

We picked 20 questions Australians actually type, five each about law, building, SEO and money, from “how long does probate take nsw” to “how much deposit do i need for a house australia”. For each one we recorded Google’s organic top 10 (desktop, Australia) and every page Google AI Mode cited in its answer. That gave 255 pages: 199 top 10 results and 97 AI Mode citations, with 41 pages in both. We fetched every page and could read 218. Reddit, Facebook, Canstar and some government and law firm sites blocked us, and one was a PDF.

In each page we looked for nine trust signals that can be detected reliably in the code: a named person as author, that author marked up as a Person in schema, a link to an author bio page, credentials near the author’s name (such as “Principal Solicitor”, “LLB” or “Licensed Builder”), a visible published or updated date, a link to an About page, an ABN, a phone number and a street address. We also counted links from the main content to other sites, and how many of those went to government, legal or university sources. We did not try to judge first-hand photos or experience, because code can not tell your own job photo from a stock image.

For the main comparison we left out government pages and forum or video pages, because they do not work like a business article, and we report them separately below.

## Do these signals separate the pages AI Mode cites?

Barely. Across 62 cited pages and 110 top 10 pages that AI Mode did not cite, most signals landed within a few points of each other, and several went the “wrong” way.

E-E-A-T signals on pages cited by Google AI Mode vs top 10 pages not citedPaired horizontal bars for eight signals. Cited vs not cited: named author 42% vs 39%, author Person schema 34% vs 33%, author bio link 23% vs 29%, credentials 26% vs 25%, visible date 37% vs 43%, ABN 26% vs 35%, street address 58% vs 41%, links to government, legal or university sources 42% vs 31%.Cited by Google AI Mode (62 pages)Top 10, not cited (110 pages)Named author byline42%39%Author as Person schema34%33%Link to author bio page23%29%Author credentials shown26%25%Visible published or updated date37%43%ABN on the page26%35%Street address on the page58%41%Links to gov, legal oruniversity sources42%31%0%25%50%75%100%

Share of business and publisher pages showing each signal. Government, forum and video pages excluded. Source: Uprise Digital research, 24 September 2026, n = 172 pages across 20 Australian queries.

Here is the full comparison, including top 3 against positions 4 to 10.

| Signal | Cited by AI Mode (62) | Top 10, not cited (110) | Top 3 (35) | Positions 4 to 10 (97) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Named author byline | 42% | 39% | 43% | 37% |
| Author marked up as Person schema | 34% | 33% | 31% | 32% |
| Link to author bio page | 23% | 29% | 31% | 27% |
| Author credentials shown | 26% | 25% | 23% | 26% |
| Visible published or updated date | 37% | 43% | 29% | 46% |
| Link to an About page | 87% | 91% | 89% | 91% |
| ABN on the page | 26% | 35% | 29% | 36% |
| Phone number on the page | 76% | 70% | 71% | 73% |
| Street address on the page | 58% | 41% | 34% | 47% |
| At least one outbound link in the content | 60% | 60% | 63% | 59% |
| Links to gov, legal or university sources | 42% | 31% | 29% | 34% |

Business and publisher pages only (government, forum and video pages excluded). Top 3 and 4 to 10 columns include cited and uncited pages. Source: Uprise Digital research, 24 September 2026.

Two gaps stand out. Cited pages more often showed a street address, and more often linked to a government, court or legislation source. The address gap is the only one that passes a basic statistical test at this sample size, and only just, so we would call it a hint rather than a finding. It is also a sensible one: an AI answer about probate or granny flat approvals will lean on pages that point to the Supreme Court or the council, and on firms that are clearly real businesses in a real place.

The top 3 result is the more surprising one. Pages in the top three were slightly more likely to carry a byline, but less likely to show a date, an address or an ABN than pages further down. If Google were ticking boxes, the top three would look tidier. They did not.

AI Mode only partly followed Google’s own ranking. Of its 97 citations, 41 (42%) were pages in the organic top 10, and 23 of those came from positions 1 to 3. Two of the 20 answers (both SEO questions) cited nothing at all.

## Who wins without a byline: government pages and Reddit

The pages that did best on our 20 questions were often the ones with the least decoration. Ten of the 20 number one results were government pages: the NSW Supreme Court, Legal Aid NSW, the Federal Circuit and Family Court, Moneysmart, the ATO, Revenue NSW and firsthomebuyers.gov.au. Government pages made up 26% of all AI Mode citations and 25% of top 3 results, against 18% of the top 10 overall. Not one of the 37 government pages we could read named an author.

That is exactly what the rater guidelines describe under Authoritativeness. Their own example is that “the official government page for getting a passport is the unique, official, and authoritative source for passport renewal.” Nobody needs a byline on the ATO’s capital gains tax page. The institution is the credential.

Reddit took four more number one spots: “cost to build a house melbourne”, “how long does it take to build a house australia”, “how long does seo take to work” and “is seo worth it for small business”. Those threads have usernames, not credentials. What they offer is Experience in its plainest form: people saying what their own build cost or how long their own SEO took. The guidelines make room for this, and so, clearly, does Google’s ranking. Google’s [announcement of the extra “E” in December 2022](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t)
 made the same point, noting that for some searches people value “content produced by someone who has first-hand, life experience on the topic at hand.”

For a small business, the lesson is not “be the government” or “post on Reddit”. It is that trust comes from being a recognised source and from showing real experience, and a byline only helps when it points to both.

## EEAT by industry: lawyers, builders, SEO and money

The industry split was the most useful thing in the data for our clients, because it shows where the gaps are.

Share of top 10 pages with a named author, by industryHorizontal bars. SEO pages 73%, law pages 31%, building pages 29%, money pages 11% had a named author byline. Government, forum and video pages excluded.SEO pages (40)73%Law pages (29)31%Building pages (35)29%Money and super pages (28)11%0%50%100%

Top 10 business and publisher pages with a named person as author, by industry. Source: Uprise Digital research, 24 September 2026, n = 132 pages.

SEO companies write for other marketers, and they byline almost everything. Law firms, where Google’s own guidelines say expertise matters most, named an author on fewer than a third of their ranking pages. Money pages were mostly banks and super funds, which rely on the brand instead: 75% showed an ABN and 75% linked to an official source such as the ATO or Moneysmart, but only 11% named a person.

On legal pages, the lawyer behind the advice was named less than a third of the time.

### For law firms

A family law or wills page is about as YMYL as content gets. The firms that did byline well, such as the contested wills page from Gerard Malouf and Partners, named a senior lawyer and linked to their profile. Most did not. If you run a firm, naming the lawyer who wrote or reviewed each guide, linking to their profile with their admission year and any accreditation, and citing the legislation or court page you rely on costs almost nothing. Our [law firm SEO guide](/blog/law-firm-seo/)
 covers the practice area pages these guides should support, and [local SEO for lawyers](/blog/local-seo-for-lawyers/)
 covers the address and profile side.

### For builders

Building cost and timeline questions were where Reddit did best, which tells you what searchers want: real numbers from real jobs. A builder who shows a finished job with its actual build time and cost range, names the site supervisor, and lists a licence number is showing Experience that a forum thread can not. [SEO for builders](/blog/seo-for-builders/)
 and our guide to [builder landing pages](/blog/builder-landing-pages/)
 show where that proof should sit.

## E-E-A-T fixes for a small Australian business site

Our data says none of these will lift you on its own. We still recommend all of them, because they are what customers and Google’s raters look for, and because the one pattern that did show up (real businesses citing real sources) is built from exactly these pieces.

| Fix | What it looks like | Google’s own wording |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Name the author on advice pages | “Written by Jane Citizen, Principal Solicitor” at the top of the article | “Do pages carry a byline, where one might be expected?” |
| 2. Link the byline to a real bio | Bio page with photo, admission year or licence number, accreditation, years in the trade | “Do bylines lead to further information about the author” |
| 3. Say who runs the business | About page naming the owners, with ABN, licence, street address and phone | Raters are told to look at the “About us” page as a starting point |
| 4. Show first-hand experience | Your own job photos, real timelines, real price ranges, what went wrong | “first-hand or life experience for the topic” |
| 5. Cite primary sources | Link the legislation, ATO, court, council or licensing body you rely on | “consistent with well-established expert consensus” |
| 6. Get YMYL pages reviewed | “Reviewed by” a practising lawyer, licensed builder or registered tax agent | “a high level of expertise may be required” |
| 7. Keep dates honest | Show an updated date only when you actually change the facts | Trust: “accurate, honest, safe, and reliable” |
| 8. Mark up the author and business | Person schema for authors, Organization or LocalBusiness schema for the business | Helps machines connect the page to the right people |
| 9. Earn what others say about you | Reviews, association listings, awards, local press | “What others say about the website or content creators” |
| 10. Avoid conflict-of-interest spin | No self-written “reviews” or fake testimonials | Raters are warned about “a clear conflict of interest” |

Source: Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (11 September 2025) and Google Search Central, read 24 September 2026.

Real jobs, real numbers and named people are the Experience a forum thread can not match.

For the markup side of fix 8, our [schema markup guide](/blog/schema-markup-for-aeo/)
 has copy-ready Person and Organization code. If your business name is well known enough to have its own panel on Google, our study of the [Google knowledge panel](/blog/google-knowledge-panel/)
 shows how that entity side works, and our guide to [SEO for small business](/blog/seo-for-small-business/)
 puts these fixes in order with everything else.

This Semrush video is a fair plain-English walk through what the framework is and how sites try to show it, if you would rather watch than read.

## How we did this research

On 24 September 2026 we ran 20 Australian informational queries: five law (“how long does probate take nsw”, “do i need a lawyer for a divorce australia”, “how much does a family lawyer cost australia”, “how to contest a will nsw”, “what is a binding financial agreement”), five building (“knockdown rebuild cost sydney”, “granny flat approval brisbane”, “cost to build a house melbourne”, “how long does it take to build a house australia”, “duplex build cost melbourne”), five SEO (“how much does seo cost australia”, “how long does seo take to work”, “what is local seo”, “how to get my business on google maps”, “is seo worth it for small business”) and five money (“how much super should i have at 40”, “how to reduce capital gains tax australia”, “first home buyer grant nsw”, “salary sacrifice super explained”, “how much deposit do i need for a house australia”).

- **Results:** Google organic top 10 (desktop, Australia, English) and the cited sources in Google AI Mode for each query, one run each. 255 pages in total.
- **Pages read:** 218 of 255. The rest blocked automated requests (mostly Reddit, Facebook, Canstar and Forbes) or were a PDF.
- **Signals:** detected from each page’s HTML with fixed rules. A byline counted only when it named a person (not “Admin”, “Our Team” or the business name) in the visible text, the author meta tag or the author field in schema. Credentials counted when a title or qualification appeared next to that name. Dates counted when labelled as published or updated, or in a time tag in the main content.
- **Groups:** the main comparison uses 172 business and publisher pages, leaving out government pages (.gov.au) and forum or video pages.

Limits: 20 queries and one run each is a small sample, and AI Mode answers change between runs. Automated detection misses some bylines (for example an author name shown only as an image) and can not judge quality, accuracy or real experience, which are what raters are actually asked to assess. We measured whether signals were present, not whether the content was good.

## Frequently asked questions

### What does E-E-A-T stand for?

It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. Google added the first “E” for Experience in December 2022. Trust is the central part: Google’s rater guidelines say untrustworthy pages score low however expert they seem.

### Does Google use EEAT to rank pages?

Not directly. Google’s Search Central documentation says “E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor”, but that its systems use a mix of factors that identify that kind of content, and weight them more on YMYL topics. Quality rater scores do not change rankings directly.

### How do I improve E-E-A-T?

Name the real person behind each advice page and link to a bio with their credentials, show your business details and address, cite primary sources such as legislation or the ATO, and add first-hand proof from your own work. In our research those signals alone did not separate winning pages, so pair them with genuinely useful, accurate content and independent reviews and mentions.

### What is EEAT in content writing?

In content writing, it means making it clear who wrote a piece, why they are qualified, how they know what they are saying, and where the facts come from. Google’s “Who, How, and Why” questions are a good checklist: is the author obvious, does the byline lead somewhere, and was the content made to help people rather than to rank?

### Does E-E-A-T matter for AI search?

Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, so the same quality standards apply. In our test, pages AI Mode cited had almost the same rate of bylines and author bios as pages it skipped, but were more likely to show a street address and to link to government or legal sources.

### What are YMYL topics?

YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life: topics that could significantly affect someone’s health, finances, safety or wellbeing. Legal advice, tax, super, home loans and building work all qualify. Google’s guidelines hold these pages to the highest standard of trust.

If you want an honest read on how your site shows experience, expertise and trust, and which fixes are worth your time, our team can review it with you. See how we approach [search engine optimisation for Australian businesses](/seo/)
 and what that work involves.

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