The definition
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It comes from Google’s published guidelines for the human raters who evaluate search quality.
The first E, Experience, asks whether the content reflects genuine first-hand involvement, which matters particularly for local trades.
Common misreadings
It is no kind of metric, number, or thing an algorithm outputs. There is no E-E-A-T score to check, and anyone selling one has invented it.
It describes what quality raters are asked to assess, which informs how systems are evaluated and tuned.
What it means practically
Show who did the work and why they are credible. Real named people, real credentials, real photographs of real jobs. Cite sources. Make claims that can be checked. Be findable as a real business with a consistent identity.
For a local trade the Experience element is the most accessible advantage, because you have actually done the work, and most content in your category has not.
Check it yourself
Open your most important service page and ask: does it name a real person, show real work, or cite anything checkable? Or could it have been written by someone who has never done the job?
For a trade, first-hand evidence is the most accessible advantage available, and most content in your category does not have it.
See where you actually stand
A free Visibility Check runs twelve real buying questions for your category across three surfaces.
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