Trust Signals (EEAT)
Trust Signals measure EEAT — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — which Google uses as quality guidelines for evaluating pages, especially in YMYL (Your Money Your Life) niches.
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.
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.
Contact information
Visible contact information (phone number, email, physical address) demonstrates that a real organisation stands behind the content. Particularly important for e-commerce, financial, and health-related sites.
Privacy policy and About page
A privacy policy is legally required in many jurisdictions and signals transparency to Google's quality raters. An About page provides authorship context and organisational background.
Author information
Named authors with credentials (especially for YMYL content) demonstrate Expertise. Structured data using the Person or Author schema type helps Google associate content with a specific expert.
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.
Metrics
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| HTTPS | Whether the page is served over HTTPS. |
| Contact info | Whether a phone, email, or address is detectable on the page. |
| Privacy policy | Whether a link to a privacy policy is found. |
| About page | Whether a link to an About page is found. |
| Author info | Whether author name or bio is present. |
| Organization Schema | Whether Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD is present. |
| Social platforms | Number of social media profile links found. |