E-E-A-T Checklist

I made this checklist to turn the ideas in Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines into specific things you can check and fix: bylines, author pages, first-hand experience, sources, reviews, policies and extra care for YMYL topics.

It is for business owners, content teams and SEOs who want their content to give people a clear reason to trust it. Run the site-level checks once, then work through your most important pages one at a time.

What’s included

• What E-E-A-T means: a plain-English summary of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, with example signals for each.
• YMYL checks: the extra steps for pages about health, money, safety or legal topics.
• Authors and author pages: what a strong byline and bio should include.
• First-hand experience signals: how to show you have actually done or used what you write about.
• Sources, reviews and reputation: citations, independent reviews and what others say about you.
• About, contact and policies: the trust basics every site needs.
• Page-level and site-level tables: 26 checks with why each matters, a status box and notes.
• Action plan: a table to assign each fix an owner and due date.

How to use it

1. Make a copy of the Google Doc and add your site details at the top.
2. Decide whether your site covers YMYL topics. If it does, start with the YMYL checks.
3. Work through the site-level table once for the whole website.
4. Run the page-level table on your most important pages first: top earners, top traffic and anything giving advice.
5. Move every unticked item into the action plan with an owner and due date.
6. Repeat the checks each quarter and after any major site change.

Tips from my client work

• Search your brand name plus "reviews" in a private window. The rater guidelines ask raters to look at what others say about you, so see what a stranger would find.
• Replace at least one stock image on each key page with an original photo of a real job, product or place. It is one of the simplest ways to show first-hand experience.
• If a non-expert writes your content, add a named expert reviewer and a review date. This matters most on YMYL pages.
• Make your author pages worth reading: qualifications, years in the field, what the person does day to day and links to their other work.
• Keep your business name, address and phone number identical on your site, Google Business Profile and directories.

FAQs

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

Not as a single score. E-E-A-T comes from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which human raters use to assess search results. Google uses that feedback to check its systems are surfacing helpful, reliable content, so improving the signals in this checklist supports the qualities Google is trying to reward.

What is the most important part of E-E-A-T?

Trust. The rater guidelines describe trust as the most important element, with experience, expertise and authoritativeness supporting it. A page that is inaccurate, misleading or hides who is behind it will struggle however expert it looks.

Does E-E-A-T matter for small business websites?

Yes. Small businesses often have strong experience and expertise but do not show it: no author names, no photos of real work, no licence numbers, thin about pages. This checklist helps you surface what you already have.