EEAT Quality Rater Guidelines – FatRank

Google has made significant changes to its (QRG) Quality Rater Guidelines for search.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines have continuously been updated recently in their constant battle to try and improve the SERPs.

The most important change to the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) is the introduction of the letter E to the start of the popular acronym E-A-T.

Previous articles about EEAT SEO are now a thing of the past with the new acronym of E-E-A-T superseding it.

In our EEAT Quality Rater Guidelines update we will explain all the major changes you need to be made aware of now E-E-A-T has superseded EAT signals.

What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

Google has now added the extra E which stands for Experience.

The addition of “experience” is focusing more on how the content creator has first-hand experience in the topic.

Google states “trust” is at the centre of E-E-A-T and is the “most important member of the E-E-A-T family”

The latest EEAT signals clarify how the Google Quality Raters should be evaluating the reputation of websites and content contributors.

So What is Experience on EEAT?

Google have said the following on “Experience” signals as part of EEAT:

“content also demonstrate that it was produced with some degree of experience, such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating what a person experienced?”

In the latest version of revised EEAT Quality Rater Guidelines PDF Google explained:

“some situations where really what you value most is content produced by someone who has first-hand, life experience on the topic at hand.”

Google is trying to understand the search intent better to match the query with the best results possible.

Search Perspective Frameworks

The use of Search Perspective Frameworks is going a be a huge element to Google ranking algorithms in April 2023.

Google shares an example in the revised EEAT Quality Rater Guidelines PDF:

“if you’re looking for information on how to correctly fill out your tax returns, that’s probably a situation where you want to see content produced by an expert in the field of accounting. But if you’re looking for reviews of a tax preparation software, you might be looking for a different kind of information — maybe it’s a forum discussion from people who have experience with different services.”

This exact example comes down to Google trying to choose the Search Perspective Frameworks best match to the search query in do they want to see:

• Consideration Search Perspective Framework
• Contrarian Search Perspective Framework
• Experience Search Perspective Framework
• Expert Search Perspective Framework
• Discussion Search Perspective Framework
• Sales and Support Data Search Perspective Framework
• Prediction Search Perspective Framework

Google appears to be evolving its language to be more inclusive and keep up with the times. It added many new mentions of social media platforms, influencers, and how content can take different forms, such as video, UGC, and social media posts.

Google is trying to match the Best Search Perspective Framework to match the search query.

Do Google Quality Raters Impact Rankings?

The search quality evaluators’ ratings do not directly impact rankings but they do provide feedback that helps Google improve its algorithms.

Google’s (QRG) Quality Rater Guidelines clearly demonstrates on what websites and web pages Google prefers to rank.

Google is updating their E-E-A-T Quality Rater Guidelines PDF for a reason.

The Quality Rater Guidelines are a crucial document for anyone who works in search marketing because they give us a guidebook for where Google wants its algorithms to go.

Although search quality evaluators’ ratings do not directly impact rankings the guidelines are showing you exactly what Google ideally wants to rank and if you can provide the simple math you can manipulate rankings to position one for your desired focus keywords.

Google Are Seeking Clarification

Although many affiliates might sulk for sudden ranking drops for them to compete in todays SERP they need to go the extra mile on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

The main takeaway is Google are looking for clarification on the following:

• Finding Who is Responsible for the Website and Who Created the Content on the Page
• Do Google Really Think They Have The Expert Knowledge on That Topic
• Or Do Google Have Enough Evidence They Have Experienced Using The Service or Product

The best techniques of improving your E-E-A-T scores is providing information gain and not solely providing copycat content.

Google is also increasingly focused on the originality of the content and the presence of insights not found elsewhere.

Then spending the time and effort to build out your about page, contact page and actually forming yourself as an industry expert on the topic you are writing about.

How to Monitor EEAT Score?

The best tool to monitor your EEAT signals is Page Optimizer Pro EEAT Analysis.

PageOptimizer Pro will crawl your website for certain E-E-A-T signals and then will crawl your competitor sites.

PageOptimizer.Pro will pull out the things that you have which are part of our E-E-A-T guidelines and things that your competitors have and you can see the things that you miss.

Improving your Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust is important when Google Quality Raters are looking at your domain.

Kyle Roof has focused his tool on improving the Experiences Feature as the “Experience” element of EEAT is new to the QRG documents.

Summary

The addition of “experience” should of been included from the start and has been on the radar for a long time now.

How can affiliate sites reviewing 100 TV’s and 20 washing machines be taken seriously when the website is owned by a 19 year old working out of his bedroom.

Does Google really believe the affiliate marketer has bought all 100 televisions to review them?

Or is the tech savvy affiliate marketer just listing the products who pay the highest commission.

It is nice to see them document it and pull it out as one of the four core aspects of defining quality.

E-E-A-T superseding EAT SEO is certainly a positive step in the right direction taken by Google in April 2023.

Content Creators are going to need to improve How To Demonstrate First-Hand Experiences with the introduction of the letter E to the start of the popular acronym E-A-T.

All Related EEAT Posts

Check out the in-depth list of EEAT posts.