E-E-A-T Score Checker
Ten questions, two minutes, a score out of 100 and a pillar-by-pillar view of where your Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust signals are thin.
Get your E-E-A-T score
Ten questions across every E-E-A-T pillar. Find out how Google's quality rater guidelines would assess your site, and exactly where to improve.
What this tool does
This E-E-A-T score checker is a free self-assessment I built to turn Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines into ten plain questions you can answer about your own site. Answer Yes, Partly or No to each and it scores you out of 100, breaks the result down across the four E-E-A-T pillars plus two supporting signals (content quality and technical trust), and tells you which pillar to fix first.
It is for site owners, in-house marketers and SEO practitioners who suspect that credibility, not keywords, is what is holding their rankings and AI citations back, and who want a structured way to check before spending money. E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google's human quality raters look for when judging whether a page deserves to rank. Google does not publish an E-E-A-T score, so no tool can read yours. What this checker does is make the assessment honest, consistent and repeatable.
Four steps from start to score
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Start the checker and answer ten questions
Each question asks whether a specific E-E-A-T signal is in place on your site. The strip at the top shows which of the six areas you are in, and a hint under each question describes a strong version of that signal. You can go back and change an answer at any point.
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Answer Yes, Partly or No
Yes means the signal is in place across the site. Partly means some pages have it, not consistently. No means it is not there. Be honest: an inflated answer hides the gap you came here to find.
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Read your score, band and pillar chart
After the tenth answer you get a score out of 100, one of five bands, a percentage for each E-E-A-T pillar, and two extra bars for content quality and technical trust.
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Act on the "Where to focus" list
The checker names the pillars under half marks and what to change first. Copy your score, retake after making changes, or request a free audit of your real pages.
How the score is calculated
The checker is deliberately simple, and the weights are printed here so you can see exactly what a score means.
Every question carries the same weight. The four E-E-A-T pillars get two questions each (20 points per pillar); content quality and technical trust get one each (10 points). A pillar's percentage is points earned divided by points available, rounded. The headline score is the sum of all ten answers.
| Pillar | Questions | Points available | Share of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Experience | Q1 first-hand experience in the content, Q2 verifiable data from your own work | 20 | 20% |
| Expertise | Q3 named authors with relevant credentials, Q4 a dedicated author or about page | 20 | 20% |
| Authoritativeness | Q5 quality backlinks from relevant publications, Q6 third-party brand mentions and citations | 20 | 20% |
| Trustworthiness | Q7 visible reviews and social proof, Q8 transparent policies and contact details | 20 | 20% |
| Content quality | Q9 comprehensive, current coverage of the topic | 10 | 10% |
| Technical trust | Q10 structured data for your content type and authorship | 10 | 10% |
The "Where to focus" list uses fixed thresholds. Any pillar under 50% is flagged as a gap. Expertise between 50% and 99% is flagged as a quick win, because a fuller author page is usually the fastest fix. Content quality and technical trust are flagged below 100%, since each rests on one question. Suggested next steps follow the total: 70 and above points to AI visibility and content refresh work, 50 to 69 to on-page and content strategy work, under 50 to a technical audit and an AI visibility audit.
The 20 signals the checker tests
Each of the ten questions assesses two related signals. The table shows all twenty, grouped by pillar, so you know what a Yes is claiming. These are the signals this questionnaire assesses, not a complete list of everything Google's raters look at.
| Signal the checker tests | What a Yes means on your site |
|---|---|
| Experience (Q1 and Q2) | |
| First-hand experience in the content | The author has used the product, visited the place or lived the situation, and says so in specific terms. |
| Personal insight and real examples | Observations, screenshots, photographs or anecdotes only someone who did the thing could produce. |
| Specific, verifiable results data | Case studies quote real numbers, dates and outcomes from your own work, not industry averages. |
| Named clients and measurable outcomes | Results are attached to named clients or projects a reader could check, with metric and timeframe. |
| Expertise (Q3 and Q4) | |
| Named authors on every page | Articles and service pages carry a real author byline, not "Admin" or the company name. |
| Credentials relevant to the topic | Each bio states qualifications, job title and experience that match the subject. |
| A dedicated author or about page | A page for each author that a rater can open, linked from every byline. |
| Depth on that page | Published work elsewhere, career history and third-party validation, not a two-line bio. |
| Authoritativeness (Q5 and Q6) | |
| Backlinks from reputable publications | Sites with editorial standards link to you, as opposed to directories, sponsored placements or link networks. |
| Topical relevance of the linking sites | Links come from sites in or adjacent to your field, which is what makes them endorsements of expertise. |
| Third-party brand mentions | Press, publications and industry sites name your brand or author, with or without a link. |
| Editorial citations of your work | Other sites cite your data, research or opinions as a source. |
| Trustworthiness (Q7 and Q8) | |
| Reviews and testimonials on key pages | Real reviews appear where a visitor decides, not on a separate page nobody visits. |
| Third-party sourced social proof | Some proof comes from platforms you do not control: Google reviews, G2, Trustpilot or industry publications. |
| Privacy policy and terms | Both exist, are easy to find and reflect what the business actually does. |
| Clear contact information | A real address, email or phone number, and a clear idea of who is accountable for the site. |
| Supporting signals: content quality (Q9) and technical trust (Q10) | |
| Comprehensive topic coverage | Key pages cover the related questions and competing perspectives a searcher expects, at the depth of the top results. |
| Up-to-date information | Content is reviewed with visible dates, and stale pages are refreshed or pruned. |
| Schema for your content type | Article, Product, Service or Organization structured data is present, valid and accurate. |
| Authorship schema | Person schema connects authors to their credentials and profiles so machines read what humans see. |
How to read your score
The checker sorts every score into one of five bands. The band matters more than the exact number: 48 and 52 are close in points but sit either side of the line where I stop calling the problem structural.
- 0 to 29WeakSignificant gaps across most pillars. More content will not move rankings until authorship, trust architecture and social proof are fixed.
- 30 to 49DevelopingSome signals in place, key pillars underdeveloped. Sites here tend to lose ground during core updates. Start with the lowest pillar.
- 50 to 69ModerateA reasonable foundation with clear strengths and clear gaps. Targeted work on the weakest pillar moves a site from competing to winning in hard SERPs and AI Overviews.
- 70 to 84StrongCredibility, authorship and trust largely in place. Remaining gains come from third-party authority and making sure AI systems pick up the signals you have.
- 85 to 100ExcellentStrong signals on every pillar. The job is maintenance: keep content current, keep collecting proof, keep monitoring.
Read the pillar percentages as well as the total. Two sites can both score 60: one with every pillar near 60%, another with Experience and Expertise at 100% and Authoritativeness at 0%. The second has one obvious job; the first needs a broader programme.
What this tool does not do
- It is a self-assessment, not a crawl. The checker never visits your site. It is only as accurate as your honesty about what is on the page.
- It does not measure backlinks or mentions. Questions 5 and 6 ask you to judge your own authority. If unsure, check a backlink tool first.
- It is not Google's score. Google does not publish one and says E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor. This is my structured reading of the rater guidelines.
- Equal weighting is a simplification. Trustworthiness is the most important member of E-E-A-T in Google's guidelines, and for YMYL topics (health, finance, legal, safety) it matters far more than the 20% assigned here.
- It does not check page-level detail. A site can score well and still have pages with anonymous authorship or stale claims. An audit of the real pages is where those get found.
Questions about the checker and about E-E-A-T
What does E-E-A-T stand for?
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Google added Experience to E-A-T in December 2022 so raters could credit content by someone who has actually done the thing. Google describes Trustworthiness as the most important of the four, with the others supporting it.
Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?
Not directly. It is the framework Google gives its human quality raters, whose ratings are used to evaluate and train the ranking systems. In practice, sites with strong E-E-A-T signals hold rankings through core updates and are cited more often in AI Overviews.
Does Google publish an official E-E-A-T score?
No. Google does not assign or publish one, and any tool claiming to read it is estimating. This checker scores your answers to ten questions derived from the rater guidelines and shows you the weights so you can judge the result yourself.
How accurate is a self-assessment?
As accurate as your answers. The value is the structure: ten specific checks most site owners have never made, and the option to say Partly when Partly is the truth. For an independent view, the free SEO audit reviews your real pages against the same criteria.
Does E-E-A-T matter for non-YMYL sites?
Yes, with a lower bar. The rater guidelines demand the most from Your Money or Your Life topics such as health, finance and legal advice, but every page is judged on whether it has enough experience, expertise, authority and trust for its purpose. A recipe blog still needs an author who cooked the recipe.
What is the fastest way to improve a low score?
Usually Trust and Expertise, because they are in your control: named authors with relevant bios, a proper author page with Person schema, real reviews where people decide, visible policies and contact details. Authoritativeness takes longest because it depends on other sites.
How often should I re-run the checker?
After each round of changes, then quarterly. Signals decay: authors leave, testimonials age, content goes stale. A quarterly re-run shows whether your work is moving the score or just adding pages.
Your score tells you where the gaps are. The audit tells you which pages have them.
The AI Visibility Audit reviews your entity footprint, E-E-A-T signals and schema coverage page by page, and reports on how often AI answers cite you today.
This is one of the free SEO tools I publish on GWContent.
