Trust Signals (EEAT)
Trust Signals measure EEAT — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — which Google uses as quality guidelines for evaluating pages, especially in YMYL niches. Weight: 10%.
Details
What is EEAT
EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is Google's framework for evaluating content quality. It is not a direct ranking signal — there is no EEAT score — but it informs how Google's quality raters assess pages, which feeds into algorithm updates targeting low-quality content.
In 2026, EEAT is particularly important for AI Overviews: Google preferentially cites sources that demonstrate authority and expertise.
HTTPS
HTTPS is the baseline trust signal. All pages served over HTTP are flagged by Chrome as 'Not Secure'. Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014.
Missing HTTPS is the only critical-level issue in the Trust Signals category (−20 pts). All other trust signal issues are warnings (−10 pts).
Contact information
Visible contact information demonstrates that a real organisation stands behind the content. Particularly important for e-commerce, financial, and health-related sites.
The audit detects:
• Email addresses — via regex patterns and mailto: links
• Phone numbers — via digit patterns (7–15 digits) and tel: links
• Physical address — via HTML <address> tags
Note: the 'has_contact_info' result is set to true if either email or phone is found. The <address> tag is detected separately but does not contribute to this flag.
Privacy policy, Terms, About, Contact pages
The audit scans all page links for references to key trust pages:
• Privacy policy — links matching 'privacy', 'data protection', or Russian equivalents
• Terms of service — links matching 'terms', 'conditions', or Russian equivalents
• About page — links matching 'about', 'о нас', 'о компании'
• Contact page — links matching 'contact', 'контакт', 'обратная связь'
A privacy policy is legally required in many jurisdictions and signals transparency to Google's quality raters.
Author information
Named authors with credentials (especially for YMYL content) demonstrate Expertise. The audit checks three sources: <meta name='author'> tag, <a rel='author'> links, and the 'author' field in JSON-LD structured data.
Organization Schema
Organization or LocalBusiness schema in JSON-LD provides Google with verified information about the entity behind the site: name, logo, URL, address, social profiles. This helps Google build a Knowledge Panel for the brand.
The audit checks for Organization, LocalBusiness, or Corporation as the top-level @type in JSON-LD blocks.
Social media presence
Links to established social media profiles demonstrate that the brand has a real public presence. The audit detects links to 8 platforms: Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte (VK), and counts unique platforms found.
Metrics
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| HTTPS | Whether the page is served over HTTPS. Missing = critical (−20 pts). |
| Contact info | Whether an email or phone number is detectable on the page. |
| Privacy policy | Whether a link to a privacy policy page is found. |
| About page | Whether a link to an About page is found. |
| Author info | Whether author name or bio is present (meta tag, rel=author, or JSON-LD). |
| Organization Schema | Whether Organization, LocalBusiness, or Corporation JSON-LD is present. |
| Social platforms | Number of unique social media platforms linked (out of 8 checked). |
Related Topics
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Run a free SEO audit to see how your site performs in this category.