E-E-A-T checklist: 36 checks to see whether your site earns trust
Short answer
An E-E-A-T checklist tests whether your site shows experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust: the qualities Google and readers use to judge reliable content. Trust matters most, and E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor. Ours has 36 checks across five areas, each with a way to verify it and a priority. We’ll email you the PDF.
Google E-E-A-T: what it is and how Google uses it
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. It’s how Google describes content people can rely on, and the term comes from the Google quality rater guidelines (officially the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines). In December 2022 Google added the first E, for experience, to what used to be E-A-T, which is why you still see “E-A-T” and “EAT SEO” around. Many people simply write EEAT, and “EEAT SEO” and “EEAT guidelines” all point to the same idea.
Trust sits at the center of E-E-A-T. The other three support it, but content doesn’t have to show all of them at once: one page is useful because of the author’s experience, another because of their expertise. The guidelines are blunt about it: an untrustworthy page has low E-E-A-T no matter how experienced or expert its creator seems.
Two things to know before you start. First, Google says E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor. Its systems use a mix of many signals that help identify content with good E-E-A-T, and for YMYL topics they give that content even more weight. Second, quality raters don’t decide rankings. Their ratings help Google check whether changes to Search are working, much like the feedback cards a restaurant gets from diners.
So this checklist doesn’t score “E-E-A-T points,” because there are none. It checks whether your site shows what a person deciding whether to trust you looks for: who is behind the business and the content, where the information comes from and what others say about you. These are the same questions Google suggests asking when you assess your own content.
| Element | What it means | Test question | What shows it on the page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Experience | The creator knows the subject first-hand: used the product, delivered the service, visited the place | Has the author actually done what they write about? | Your own photos and screenshots, a description of a test, an example from real work, lessons from practice |
| Expertise | The creator has the knowledge or skill the topic requires | Is the author qualified for this topic? | A bio with facts, professional credentials, accurate and complete explanations |
| Authoritativeness | The site or creator is a go-to source others point to for the topic | Do others cite you as a source? | Mentions in trade media, recommendations from organizations, citations and links from industry sites |
| Trust | The page is accurate, honest, safe and reliable; this is the most important element | Can people rely on this page and this business? | Public company and contact details, sources for figures, genuine reviews, secure payments, disclosed conflicts of interest |
Definitions follow Google’s rater guidelines (11 September 2025 version, section 3.4). The type and amount of trust needed depends on the page: an online store needs secure payments and customer service, while a page on a YMYL topic needs accuracy.
The E-E-A-T checklist: 36 checks in five areas
We grouped the checks around the three sources raters use: what the site says about itself, what others say about it and what’s visible in the content itself. On top of that comes a technical area, structured data, which helps Google connect your content to your business and its authors.
| Area | Checks | What it covers | Where to look |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. Trust: who is behind the site | 8 | About page, contact details, sales policies, safety, proof for claims, genuine reviews, a clear offer | Homepage, About page, footer, order path |
| B. Authors and experience | 8 | Bylines, author pages, real profiles, first-hand experience, expert review for YMYL, AI-assisted content | Articles, guides, reviews, author pages |
| C. Content: accuracy and sources | 8 | Sources, accuracy, dates, originality, honest titles, methodology | Your pages with the most Google traffic |
| D. Reputation | 7 | What others say, reviews, complaints, independent mentions, conflicts of interest | Google (searches that exclude your own domain), Business Profile, trade media |
| E. Structured data | 5 | Organization, Article with author, ProfilePage, matching dates, nothing hidden in markup | schema.org validator, Rich Results Test |
In the PDF template, step 0 comes before the areas: deciding whether the topic is YMYL. That decides which checks go to the top of your list.
Every check in the E-E-A-T checklist has a way to verify it, a priority and a basis: the Google document it comes from. Two checks are our own practice, and they’re labeled that way. Some overlap with our SEO checklist (consistent business details, the About page, Organization markup), because trust signals are also the foundation of ordinary SEO. High priority marks checks whose failure undermines trust or breaks Google’s rules; medium marks those that weaken the assessment; low marks housekeeping.
YMYL: when the bar goes up
YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) covers topics where mistakes could significantly harm someone’s health, financial stability or safety, or the welfare of society. The guidelines group them into four types: health or safety, financial security, government, civics and society, and other topics that could hurt people.
YMYL is a spectrum, not a label, and most topics aren’t YMYL at all. When in doubt, the guidelines suggest two questions. Would a careful person seek out experts or highly trusted sources, because even minor inaccuracies could cause harm? And would most people be content with casually asking their friends? A yes to the first points to YMYL; a yes to the second suggests it isn’t.
| Topic | Rating | Why | What it means for the checklist |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to fill out tax forms | Clear YMYL (finance) | Instructions should come from experts; a mistake can cost money | A qualified author or reviewer (B6), sources in the regulations (C1) |
| When to go to the emergency room | Clear YMYL (health) | Bad advice could cause serious harm | Experts only; consistent with medical consensus (C2) |
| Reviews of retirement savings services | YMYL, but experience is enough | Accounts from people who used the service are valuable | First-hand experience (B5), disclosed conflicts of interest (D7) |
| How often to replace a toothbrush | May be YMYL | A health topic, but a small inaccuracy is unlikely to cause harm | Standard checks; B6 usually N/A |
| An SEO guide for businesses | Probably not YMYL; contract sections are | A mistake costs time and traffic, but contract terms are a legal and financial matter | Full list; a lawyer reviews the contract sections (B6) |
| How often to wash jeans | Not YMYL | The topic carries no real risk of harm | Trust in the business and accurate content are enough |
Five examples come from the rater guidelines (sections 2.3 and 3.4.1). The SEO guide example is our own call, using the same two questions.
For YMYL content, two checks go to the top of the list: B6 (who wrote or reviewed the page) and C2 (consistency with expert consensus). The guidelines also separate experience from expertise. Someone who has been through a treatment or used a financial service can credibly share what it was like. Instructions for filling out tax forms or a comparison of treatment options, on the other hand, should come from experts. If an expert review hasn’t happened yet, don’t pretend it has: say the page isn’t professional advice and schedule the review.
How to fill in the E-E-A-T checklist, step by step
- Pick the pages to review. Don’t start with the whole site. Take the homepage, About, Contact, 3–5 service pages and your 10 pages with the most Google traffic (Search Console → Performance → Pages).
- Do step 0: assess YMYL. For each group of pages, mark whether the topic is clear YMYL, may be YMYL or isn’t. That sets the order of checks B6 and C2.
- Work through areas A–E. Mark every check OK, needs work or N/A. No online sales? Check A3 is N/A.
- Research your reputation. Run the searches from check D1 and record what you found in the table on the last page: the source, its tone and what you’ll do about it.
- Record evidence, not impressions. In the notes, write the URL and the specifics, for example “/blog/vat-2026: no byline, rates without a source.” A vague “weak E-E-A-T” helps nobody.
- Build the plan. High priority first, and for YMYL content, B6 and C2 first. Give each action an owner and a deadline in the plan table.
- Get a second opinion. Google suggests having content assessed by people you trust who aren’t affiliated with your site. Hand them the completed checklist and ask them to verify five random checks.
Run a full review every six months and after big changes: a new author, a new service, a redesign, a wave of new reviews. Check area D (reputation) every quarter, because reviews and mentions change faster than your pages.
Example: part of a completed checklist
Here’s part of the checklist filled in for a fictional accounting firm in Kraków that runs a blog about taxes for small businesses. That’s a YMYL topic (finance), so the author and accuracy checks get top priority. The data is made up. The point is how to record status and notes so the checklist turns straight into a work plan.
| No. | Check | Status | Note | Owner and deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | YMYL assessment | Clear YMYL | Blog about taxes and social security contributions: a mistake can cost a client interest | – |
| A1 | About page | Needs work | Company history is there, but no accountants’ names or qualifications | Owner, this week |
| A5 | Proof for claims | Needs work | “Over 300 happy clients” with no date or source | Owner, by month end |
| B1 | Author byline | Needs work | 14 of 20 posts are credited to “Editorial team” | Editor, by month end |
| B3 | Real author | OK | Authors are staff; photos from an office shoot | – |
| B6 | Expert review (YMYL) | Needs work | VAT articles are written by an assistant; nothing shows a tax adviser reviews them | Tax adviser, now |
| C1 | Sources | Needs work | Rates and thresholds with no links to regulations or official notices | Authors, at next update |
| C4 | Update date | Needs work | Dates changed in bulk in January although the content didn’t change | Webmaster, now |
| D4 | No incentivized reviews | Needs work | Flyer offering “10% off for a Google review” | Owner, now |
| E2 | Article author markup | Needs work | The plugin lists the firm as author instead of the person in the byline | Webmaster, after B1 |
Checks that undermine trust or break the rules come first: the discount for reviews (D4), the bulk date changes (C4) and the missing expert review on VAT articles (B6). Bylines, the About page and sources are a few weeks’ work. Structured data comes last, because it should describe what’s already on the page: a real byline first, then the author markup.
How to show experience and expertise without overselling
Google suggests three questions for every piece of content: who created it, how it was made and why. They’re a good guide to what to add to your pages.
- Who. A byline with a full name wherever readers expect one, linking to an author page. Put facts in the bio: role at the company, what they work on, examples of their work, a professional profile. For regulated professions, add a registration number readers can look up.
- How. For reviews, comparisons and reports, describe the method: how many things you checked, how, and what period the data covers. If AI did much of the writing and a reader might ask about it, say so and explain who checked the facts.
- Why. Google calls this perhaps the most important of the three. Content should help people who come to it directly, not just pull in search traffic. An article on a subject the business doesn’t know, written only because the keyword has volume, fails this test.
An example from our own site: our About page describes the person who runs client SEO and writes our guides, and the Person markup has a stable identifier that our articles point to. We show results as Search Console data with the measurement window stated, as in the portfolio on our homepage, rather than as general promises.
Structured data is an add-on, not a shortcut. Google recommends giving each author a separate field in Article markup with a type and a url or sameAs, and author pages can be marked up as ProfilePage. But the markup must describe what readers can see. An author who exists only in JSON-LD achieves nothing, and Google lists fake reviews in markup as not allowed.
Common E-E-A-T mistakes
- Treating E-E-A-T as a metric to pump up. E-E-A-T SEO isn’t about adding an author box. Google assesses a page through many signals, and an author box without real knowledge in the content changes nothing.
- Invented experts. An AI-generated headshot, a made-up name, a title nobody awarded. Google calls this deception that makes a page untrustworthy to people and to its systems.
- Refreshing dates only. Google lists changing a date without substantially changing the content as a sign of search-engine-first content. It also misleads readers.
- Buying or rewarding reviews. A discount for a review, reviews written by staff or posted from several accounts by one person break Google Maps policy, and those reviews get removed. Our guide on how to get Google reviews covers asking for reviews within the rules.
- Hidden conflicts of interest. A ranking your own product wins, or a review with affiliate links and no disclosure. The guidelines tell raters to treat such content as less trustworthy.
- Copy-paste bios. The same “expert with years of experience” paragraph under every author says nothing about any of them.
- Writing to a word count. Google says it has no preferred word count. Padding a page to hit a number is writing for a search engine, not a reader.
- Mass-produced pages with no value. Generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, with little value for readers, is what Google’s spam policies call scaled content abuse, whether a person or AI wrote them.
When a checklist isn’t enough
You can work through this E-E-A-T checklist in a few hours. Our free SEO audit covers some of the technical checks, such as HTTPS and Organization structured data. The rest needs a human, because E-E-A-T is about how your business and content look to a reader.
Outside help makes sense when your site loses traffic after an algorithm update, when you publish YMYL content, or when the list of issues is long and needs turning into a plan. Our SEO audit covers technical SEO and Core Web Vitals, content and semantics, and your link profile; as a standalone service it starts at €350 net. Some fixes, such as new content with your own data and sources, fit into our SEO services: the SEO Standard plan is €450 net per month for up to 20 keywords, 2 pieces of content and 2 links.
What about AI answers? Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond SEO fundamentals. We don’t promise that E-E-A-T work will get you cited in ChatGPT or Gemini. If you want to know whether AI models mention your business, see AI search optimization: the AI visibility audit costs €235 net.
Template preview: the full E-E-A-T checklist
Here’s everything in the template: step 0 (YMYL), 36 checks across five areas, a reputation table and an action plan. In the PDF, every check has fields for status (OK, needs work, N/A) and notes with an owner and deadline.
Step 0. Is the topic YMYL?
Answer two questions from Google’s rater guidelines for each group of pages (homepage, services, blog sections):
- Would a careful person seek out experts or highly trusted sources here, because even minor inaccuracies could cause harm? If yes, the topic is likely YMYL.
- Would most people be content with casually asking their friends about it? If yes, the topic is likely not YMYL.
YMYL groups: Health or safety; Financial security; Government, civics and society; Other topics that could hurt people. Rating for each group of pages: ☐ Clear YMYL ☐ May be YMYL ☐ Not YMYL.
A. Trust: who is behind the site (8 checks)
What the site says about itself: who is responsible for it, how to get in touch, whether selling is fair and safe, and whether claims are backed up.
- ☐ A1. The About page says who is responsible for the site: the full business or personal name, what you do, where you operate and who runs it. How to check: Read your About page as someone who has never heard of you. Within a minute they should know who is behind the content and the offer. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 2.5.2.
- ☐ A2. Contact details are easy to find from every page: phone, email, address or service area, and company details. How to check: Check the footer and menu on the homepage, an article and a service page. A contact form alone isn’t enough for services or sales. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 2.5.3.
- ☐ A3. If the site takes orders or payments, the terms, payment, returns and complaints policies and customer service contact are public. How to check: Go through the order path to the end. Note where a customer finds this information before paying. No online sales: N/A. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 2.5.3 and 3.4.
- ☐ A4. The site is safe: HTTPS with no browser warnings, no suspicious redirects, forced downloads or ads posing as content. How to check: Open a few pages in a private window and on a phone. Our free SEO audit also checks HTTPS and the http:// redirect. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.4 (safety).
- ☐ A5. Claims about the business (number of clients, results, awards, certificates, “No. 1”) are backed by a source, a date or a document. How to check: List every number and award on your homepage and About page. Note where the proof is for each. No proof: remove it or make it specific. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.1.
- ☐ A6. Reviews, testimonials and case studies on the site come from real customers and can be verified. How to check: Note the source of each testimonial: your Business Profile, an email, the client’s consent. A link to your Google Business Profile lets readers see every review. Priority: medium. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.2.
- ☐ A7. The offer says plainly what the customer gets: scope, price or how it’s quoted, timing and how to cancel. How to check: Read a service page as a customer would. Do you know what you’ll pay, or what the price depends on, and how to end the contract? Priority: medium. Basis: Our practice.
- ☐ A8. Your business name, address, phone number and description match on your site, your Google Business Profile and your other profiles. How to check: Copy the details from each place into one table and compare them character by character. The same check is in the SEO checklist (C4). Priority: medium. Basis: Our practice.
B. Authors and experience: who created the content (8 checks)
Who wrote the content, whether they’re a real person, whether they know the subject first-hand and whether a qualified person checked YMYL content.
- ☐ B1. Articles, guides and reviews carry an author byline wherever a reader might ask “who wrote this?”. How to check: Review your 10 pages with the most Google traffic. A service page can be credited to the company; an expert guide needs a named person. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content (“Who”).
- ☐ B2. The byline links to an author page: their role, what they do, what they write about, and contact details or a professional profile. How to check: Click the byline. If it isn’t a link or leads to an empty page, the check fails. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content (“Who”).
- ☐ B3. The author is a real person: no made-up names, AI-generated headshots or credentials they don’t hold. How to check: Compare the bio with the author’s professional profile. Google calls fabricated author profiles a form of deception that makes a page untrustworthy. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content (“Who”).
- ☐ B4. The bio gives verifiable facts instead of filler: job title, scope of work, projects, and a registration number for a regulated profession. How to check: Underline every sentence in the bio that can’t be checked (“passionate,” “expert with years of experience”). Replace it with facts or cut it. Priority: medium. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.4.
- ☐ B5. The content shows first-hand experience: your own photos, screenshots, data, a description of a test or an example from real work. How to check: For each guide, note what in it is yours and missing from other results. If there’s nothing, the page is summarizing others. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content; guidelines, 3.4.
- ☐ B6. YMYL content (health, finance, safety, civic matters) is written or reviewed by a qualified person, and the page shows who reviewed it and when. How to check: Do step 0 first. For a YMYL topic, add a line such as “Reviewed by [name], [profession], [date]” under the content. Not YMYL: N/A. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.4.1.
- ☐ B7. If AI played a substantial part in creating the content and a reader might ask “how was this made?”, the page explains it, and AI isn’t credited as the author. How to check: Write down an editorial rule: who fact-checks AI-assisted content. Google says an AI author byline is probably not the best way to show it. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: AI-generated content (FAQ).
- ☐ B8. The site sticks to its subjects: content covers what the business does and what its authors know. How to check: Group your articles by topic. Send anything outside your expertise, written only for search traffic, to review. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: helpful content.
C. Content: accuracy, sources and freshness (8 checks)
Whether the content is accurate and sourced, whether dates tell the truth, whether the page adds something of its own and whether readers know how it was made.
- ☐ C1. Figures, regulations, recommendations and quotes have a source: a link to the original document, not to a summary. How to check: Highlight every number and every “according to…” in the text. Each needs a link or a named source with a date. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content (expertise questions).
- ☐ C2. The content has no easily verified errors, and on YMYL topics it matches established expert consensus. How to check: Ask someone in your field who didn’t write it to read it. Google itself suggests asking trusted people unaffiliated with your site. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content (accuracy).
- ☐ C3. The page shows a publication or update date with a label (“Published,” “Updated”). How to check: Check articles and pages with data that changes: prices, rules, rates. A date without a label is unclear. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: byline dates.
- ☐ C4. The update date only changes when the content changes substantially. How to check: Compare the “Updated” date with the revision history in your CMS. Google lists changing dates just to look fresh as a sign of search-engine-first content. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: helpful content.
- ☐ C5. The content adds something of its own: data, an example, analysis or lessons from practice, rather than rewriting other sources. How to check: Compare the page with the top three Google results. List what you have that they don’t. An empty list fails the check. Priority: high. Basis: Google: helpful content (originality).
- ☐ C6. The title and H1 describe the content accurately: no exaggeration, shock value or promises the text doesn’t keep. How to check: Read the title, then the text. Does the title promise something the page doesn’t deliver? Priority: medium. Basis: Google: helpful content.
- ☐ C7. Where it matters, the content says how it was made: how you tested, how many things you checked, where the data comes from and what period it covers. How to check: Reviews, rankings, comparisons and data reports need a method section. A general how-to guide: often N/A. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: helpful content (“How”).
- ☐ C8. The writing is careful, with no typos or errors, and ads and pop-ups don’t cover the main content. How to check: Read the page on a phone. Check that you can reach the content without closing windows. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: helpful content; guidelines, 2.4.
D. Reputation: what others say about you (7 checks)
What independent sources say about the business and its authors, what reviews look like and whether recommendations on the site disclose conflicts of interest.
- ☐ D1. You know what others say about the business: results for [business name -site:yourdomain.com] and [business name reviews -site:yourdomain.com]. How to check: Run both searches in Google, go through the first two pages of results and record your findings in the reputation table on the last page of the template. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.3.
- ☐ D2. Authors have a footprint too: publications, talks, a professional profile, an entry in a professional register. How to check: Search for [author name + topic]. If nothing comes up, start with a professional profile and link to it from the bio. Priority: medium. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.4.
- ☐ D3. Your Google Business Profile and review sites have recent reviews, and the business replies to them, critical ones included. How to check: Business Profile → Reviews. Reply factually and leave out customer details. A few negative reviews are normal; what they say matters. Priority: medium. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.2.
- ☐ D4. The business doesn’t buy reviews, offer discounts or gifts for them, or post them from multiple accounts. How to check: Check how you ask for reviews: emails, flyers, discount codes. Google Maps policy bans paid and incentivized reviews. Priority: high. Basis: Google Maps content policy.
- ☐ D5. Recurring complaints have been looked into and the cause fixed. How to check: Group critical reviews and mentions by topic. A problem that keeps coming back has to be solved in the business, not in the copy. Priority: medium. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.2.
- ☐ D6. Independent sources mention the business or its authors: trade media, organizations, directories, events. How to check: List mentions from the last 12 months. Sponsored articles and your own social media profiles are not independent sources. Priority: medium. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.3.1.
- ☐ D7. Recommendations, rankings and reviews disclose conflicts of interest: your own product, an affiliate link, paid partnerships. How to check: Check every page that recommends a product or company. The disclosure belongs next to the content, not only in your terms. Priority: high. Basis: Rater guidelines, 3.4.
E. Structured data: your business and authors described for Google (5 checks)
JSON-LD markup that helps Google connect content to your business and its authors. It should describe what’s already visible on the page.
- ☐ E1. The homepage has Organization or LocalBusiness markup: name, logo, address, contact details and sameAs links to your business profiles. How to check: Use the Rich Results Test or the schema.org validator. Our free SEO audit checks whether this markup exists. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: Organization structured data.
- ☐ E2. Articles have Article markup in which each author has a separate author field with the Person type and a url or sameAs. How to check: Run the schema.org validator on one article. The name in the markup must match the byline. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: Article structured data.
- ☐ E3. The author page has ProfilePage markup with the author as its main subject (mainEntity). How to check: Run the validator on the author page. With a single author, a Person node with a stable @id on the About page, referenced by your articles, is enough. Priority: low. Basis: Google: ProfilePage structured data.
- ☐ E4. datePublished and dateModified in the markup match the dates visible on the page. How to check: Compare the JSON-LD with the date under the title. Dates must not be in the future. Priority: medium. Basis: Google: byline dates.
- ☐ E5. Structured data only describes what readers can see: no hidden authors, ratings or reviews. How to check: Compare every JSON-LD property with the page content. Google explicitly lists fake reviews in markup as not allowed. Priority: high. Basis: Google: general structured data guidelines.
Reputation research and action plan
The last page of the PDF has two tables to fill in. In the reputation table, write each search you ran (for example [business name reviews -site:yourdomain.com]), the source you found, its tone (positive, neutral, negative) and what you will do about it. In the action plan, list every open check with the URL, the fix, the owner and the deadline, high priority first.
Get the template (PDF)
We’ll email you the E-E-A-T checklist as a printable PDF: step 0 with the YMYL assessment, 36 checks with status and note fields, a reputation research table and an action plan.
Related guides and tools
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- SEO audit: technical SEO, content and links with a fix plan, from €350 net
- SEO services: ongoing work on content, technical SEO and links, SEO Standard from €450 net a month
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- Schema markup examples: 7 JSON-LD templates, including Organization, Person and Article
Frequently asked questions
Not as a single metric. Google says E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor. Its systems use many signals that help identify content showing experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, and for YMYL topics they give that content even more weight. That’s why you can’t “add E-E-A-T” with one element, such as an author box. What counts is whether the whole page deserves trust.
YMYL covers topics where mistakes could harm people’s health, finances or safety, or society, such as medical treatment, taxes, investing or voting rules. Google’s rater guidelines suggest two questions: would a careful person seek out an expert here, because even minor inaccuracies could cause harm, and would most people be happy with advice from friends? A yes to the first points to YMYL. Most topics, like washing jeans, aren’t YMYL.
No. According to Google, quality raters have no control over how pages rank, and their ratings aren’t used directly in ranking algorithms. They help Google check whether changes to Search are working. The Google quality rater guidelines are still worth reading, because they describe well how people recognize a trustworthy site. Much of this checklist is based on them.
Not just because AI was used. Google says appropriate use of AI or automation isn’t against its guidelines; the problem is producing content mainly to manipulate search rankings. What matters is the result: whether the text is accurate, adds something of its own and was checked by someone who knows the subject. If readers might ask “how was this made?”, explain it. Google says an AI author byline is probably not the best way to do that.
We don’t promise that. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: the same SEO fundamentals apply as in regular results. ChatGPT, Perplexity and other models have their own ways of choosing sources. Accurate, signed content with sources is simply good content, whoever reads it. If you want to know whether AI models mention your business, you need to measure AI answers separately.
Not always. A byline matters wherever a reader might ask “who wrote this?”, which means guides, articles and reviews. A service page or price list can be credited to the business. In that case the checks in area A matter more: who runs the business, how to reach it, genuine reviews and a clear offer. Mark the author checks N/A and leave them out of your score.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (E-E-A-T, YMYL, Who, How and Why) (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google: Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (11 Sep 2025 version; sections 2.3, 2.5, 3.3, 3.4) (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central Blog: E-A-T gets an extra E for Experience (15 Dec 2022) (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central Blog: Google Search’s guidance about AI-generated content (bylines, AI disclosures) (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: Influencing byline dates in Google Search (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: Article structured data (author markup best practices) (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: Organization structured data (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: General structured data guidelines (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search (including scaled content abuse) (accessed November 11, 2026)
- Maps user-generated content policy: fake engagement and incentivized reviews (accessed November 11, 2026)