E-A-T and E-E-A-T

Does E-E-A-T show up in AI answers?

Not by name, but in what engines choose to cite. Take "AthenaHQ alternatives", a question we track for attensira.com about a vendor in our category. The chart at the top of this page is where Perplexity's 33 answers to it got their sources over the 30 days to 4 October 2026, read over the Attensira MCP: 350 citations, led by comparison articles from airops.com, rankability.com and crowdreply.io, a competitor's page on aiclicks.io, and reviews on g2.com. AthenaHQ's own site is not among the six most-cited, although the answers named AthenaHQ in 66 of 66.

ChatGPT read the same question differently. Its most influential source was answers.athenahq.ai, with 129 of its 937 citations: pages AthenaHQ itself publishes about the alternatives to AthenaHQ. The next five sources, all third-party ranking and review sites, took 239 more.

So E-E-A-T shows up as a choice of evidence, and the engines do not all choose alike. Perplexity leaned on what others say about a company; ChatGPT gave the vendor's own alternatives pages the first word and set third-party rankings beside them. A brand needs both: its own pages clear enough to be quoted, and independent pages that say the same thing.

Our own row reads 0. Attensira was named in none of those 66 answers, and no citation went to attensira.com. We show it because a chart that only appears when it flatters us is not evidence of anything.

What is E-E-A-T?

It is the framework Google's search quality raters use to judge content and its creators:

• E

  Quality

  Experience

  Rater's question

  Has the creator used the product, been to the place, done the thing?

  Evidence an engine can check

  first-hand data with its date and sample size

• E

  Quality

  Expertise

  Rater's question

  Does the creator have the knowledge or skill the topic needs?

  Evidence an engine can check

  a named author with a profile elsewhere

• A

  Quality

  Authoritativeness

  Rater's question

  Is the creator or site a go-to source on this topic?

  Evidence an engine can check

  reviews, citations and coverage by others

• T

  Quality

  Trustworthiness

  Rater's question

  Is the page accurate, honest, safe and reliable?

  Evidence an engine can check

  a legal entity that matches public records, dated sources

Google added the first E, Experience, in December 2022. Before that it was E-A-T, which is why both names are in circulation.

Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?

Not as a single score. Google's helpful content guidance says E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor, but that a mix of factors that identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful. Raters do not rank pages; their judgements are used to test whether Google's systems surface good results.

Two refinements matter:

• Trust is the centre. Google says that of the four, trust is most important. A page can look expert and still fail if it is not trustworthy.
• Stakes raise the bar. Google gives more weight to E-E-A-T on topics that could significantly affect people's health, finances or safety. See YMYL.

How do you show E-E-A-T?

• Show the experience. Your own data, screenshots of real work, results with their sample size. This page opens with a reading from our own workspace, dated and with its sample size, for that reason.
• Name the person. A byline that links to a real profile. This page shows its author and the date of every source; the claims behind it are published at /claims.json.
• Say who the company is. Legal name, country, founding year and contact, stated on the site and consistent with public registers. See entity SEO.
• Source every claim. A number with its source and date. Raters and engines both discount assertions with no origin.
• Let others vouch. Reviews, references and coverage you did not write. See content authority.

Schema markup can describe the author and organisation in machine-readable form, but only for what the page visibly says.

What are the objections about E-E-A-T?

"Add author bios and E-E-A-T is done." A name that cannot be checked adds a name. Link it to something independent.

"E-E-A-T is only for health and finance." Those get extra weight. Every buyer deciding whether to trust a vendor is asking a trust question.

"Raters will review our site." Raters evaluate samples of results to test Google's systems. They do not set your rankings.

"Being new means we cannot have E-E-A-T." New companies can still be checkable: real people, a real entity, honest claims, sources. An engine does not need a long history to describe you correctly; it needs something it can verify.

How does Attensira help?

Attensira reads what AI engines say about you, including the claims they make about who you are, and checks those claims against the facts you confirm. Its crew makes your entity and authorship facts consistent across your site and the independent sources engines cite, ships each change after your approval, and measures the answers before and after. Every fact it checks against is one you confirmed, so the engines are held to what is true about you, not to what we guess. The claims documentation explains how a wrong claim is detected, and off-site work covers the independent sources.