User:

What is eat?

Assistant:

E-E-A-T is the acronym for:

– Experience
– Expertise
– Authoritativeness, and
– Trustworthiness

Google’s automated systems are designed to use many different factors to rank great content.

After identifying relevant content, their systems aim to prioritize those that seem most helpful. To do this, they identify a mix of factors that can help determine which content demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what Google call’s E-E-A-T.

Of these aspects, trust is most important. The others contribute to trust, but content doesn’t necessarily have to demonstrate all of them.

For example, some content might be helpful based on the experience it demonstrates, while other content might be helpful because of the expertise it shares.

While E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful.

For example, Google’s systems give even more weight to content that aligns with strong E-E-A-T for topics that could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society. They call these “Your Money or Your Life” topics, or YMYL for short.

Search quality raters are people who give Google insights on if their algorithms seem to be providing good results, a way to help confirm their changes are working well.

In particular, raters are trained to understand if content has strong E-E-A-T. The criteria they use to do this is outlined in Google’s search quality rater guidelines.

Reading those guidelines may help you self-assess how your content is doing from an E-E-A-T perspective, improvements to consider, and help align it conceptually with the different signals that Google’s automated systems use to rank content.

To read Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, download their pdf document, accessible at the following url:
https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/hsw-sqrg.pdf

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

User:

How do I ask “Who, How, and Why” about my content?

Assistant:

Google recommends that you consider evaluating your content in terms of “Who, How, and Why” as a way to stay on course with what their systems seek to reward.

Who (created the content)?

Something that helps people intuitively understand the E-E-A-T of content is when it’s clear who created it. That’s the “Who” to consider. When creating content, here are some who-related questions to ask yourself:

– Is it self-evident to your visitors who authored your content?
– Do pages carry a byline, where one might be expected? (Author Blocks contain this information and are typically located at the bottom of content on BlogrBee Partner Sites)
– Do bylines lead to further information about the author or authors involved, giving background about them and the areas they write about?

If you’re clearly indicating who created the content, you’re likely aligned with the concepts of E-E-A-T and on a path to success. We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it.

*How (the content was created)*

It’s helpful to readers to know how a piece of content was produced: this is the “How” to consider including in your content.

For example, with product reviews, it can build trust with readers when they understand the number of products that were tested, what the test results were, and how the tests were conducted, all accompanied by evidence of the work involved, such as photographs. It’s advice Google shares more about in their Write high quality product reviews help page.

Many types of content may have a “How” component to them. That can include automated, AI-generated, and AI-assisted content. Sharing details about the processes involved can help readers and visitors better understand any unique and useful role automation may have served.

If automation is used to substantially generate content, here are some questions to ask yourself:

– Is the use of automation, including AI-generation, self-evident to visitors through disclosures or in other ways?
– Are you providing background about how automation or AI-generation was used to create content?
– Are you explaining why automation or AI was seen as useful to produce content?

Overall, AI or automation disclosures are useful for content where someone might think “How was this created?” Consider adding these when it would be reasonably expected.

*Why (was the content created)*

“Why” is perhaps the most important question to answer about your content. Why is it being created in the first place?

The “why” should be that you’re creating content primarily to help people, content that is useful to visitors if they come to your site directly. If you’re doing this, you’re aligning with E-E-A-T generally and what Google’s core ranking systems seek to reward.

If the “why” is that you’re primarily making content to attract search engine visits, that’s not aligned with what Google’s systems seek to reward. If you use automation, including AI-generation, to produce content for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, that’s a violation of Google’s spam policies.

User:

What is Google’s opinion on AI-generated content?

Assistant:

Google has long believed in the power of AI to transform the ability to deliver helpful information.

Google’s ranking systems aim to reward original, high-quality content that demonstrates qualities of what they call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. They share more about this in their How Search Works site.

The focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped them deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.

Focusing on rewarding quality content has been core to Google since they began. It continues today, including through their ranking systems designed to surface reliable information and their helpful content system. The helpful content system was introduced to better ensure those searching get content created primarily for people, rather than for search ranking purposes.

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content