EEAT in 2025: How Google Assesses Reliability

Google's search results are constantly changing, but one thing is clear: quality and reliability always win. Especially now that AI content is appearing more and more, Google must protect users from unreliable or superficial information. That's where EEAT comes in: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. In 2025, this framework will be more important than ever. As an SEO specialist, I'll show you what EEAT means, how Google rates it and how you score with it today.

What is EEAT?

EEAT is Google's way of assessing content quality. It consists of four pillars:

• Experience: Does the author have personal experience with the subject? For example, a travel blogger who has really been to Thailand and can name unique examples of the trip.
• Expertise (Expertise): does the author have demonstrable knowledge or training? Think of a doctor writing medical information. Or a diet shop that explains why certain products are good.
• Authoritativeness: is the site or author recognized as an authority in the sector? Backlinks, citations, and mentions play a role here. Google really wants to see who's behind the content, so building a profile for the author is important.
• Trustworthiness: is the information transparent, well-founded and comes from a secure, reliable website? No spam or scammy websites, but equally existing and consistent websites.

Together, these factors determine how Google values and positions your content in search results.

What changed in 2025?

In recent years, Google has further tightened its quality guidelines. The Experience component, in particular, is getting more and more emphasis. With the rise of AI tools, anyone can generate content in seconds, but Google wants to distinguish real human input from generic texts.

This means that practical experiences, personal insights and concrete examples have become more important. In addition, Google pays closer attention to source citation, transparency and topicality. An article without a clear author, date, or references is more likely to be seen as unreliable.

How does Google rate EEAT today?

Google uses various signals to assess the reliability of content. Search Quality Raters, people who manually review pages follow the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which focuses on EEAT. Among other things, they pay attention to:

• Author pages and bios: is it clear who the writer is and what his or her background is?
• Source citation: are reliable and recognized sources used?
• Reviews and reputation: what do customers, users or third parties say about the site?
• Transparency: is it clear who is behind the website?
• Technology and safety: sites without HTTPS or with unclear navigation score worse on reliability.

For sensitive topics (such as YMYL: Health, Money, Safety) EEAT is being applied even more strictly.

Best practices for improving your EEAT

If you want to score with SEO in 2025, you need to structurally incorporate EEAT into your strategy. Here are my advice as a specialist:

1. Provide clear author information
   Add an author with name, photo, bio, and relevant experience or education to each blog or page. This shows that there are real people behind your content. I do this myself by putting my name at the top of a blog and linking to my personal author page. I would say copy and paste the idea for your own website!
2. Use reliable sources
   Refer to official bodies, scientific publications, or recognized organizations. Linking to strong external sites reinforces your reliability. In this blog, I link to sources from Google itself, giving the page more authority.
3. Collect and show reviews
   Customer reviews on Google, Trustpilot, or industry platforms are strong signals of reliability and authority.
4. Update content regularly
   A 2019 article without an update on a rapidly changing topic shows no reliability. Add new data, insights, and sources. Even though it is tedious and boring work. Go through all the content on your website once a year and adjust it where necessary. And do this once every six months for the really important pages.
5. Build your reputation outside your website
   Guest blogs, interviews, news media mentions, and strong backlinks build your authority.

Common mistakes at EEAT in 2025

However, I still often see that companies miss out on opportunities. The most common errors include:

• Publish content without author or background information. Add a profile of the writer, such as an employee of your company. That's also how you make it fun and authentic.
• Blogs and other pages write purely with AI, with no human input or practical experience. This is never going to rank!
• No references or references to unreliable sites. Always link to at least 1 external good source per page.
• Leave old content without updates or revisions. Publishing once and then letting it go no longer works either, updating is the best way.
• Over-optimization where the user is lost sight of. Think of old ways like keyword stuffing.

These errors make it harder for your content to rank high and may even be penalized by Google with a penalty.

Future of EEAT: Where is Google headed?

In the coming years, Google is expected to use EEAT even more as a weapon against disinformation. Especially with the rise of AI content, signals of human experience and transparency will become increasingly important. Websites that are now investing in EEAT are therefore future-proof and build sustainable authority.

I expect structured data (such as author markup), reputation signals outside your own site, and user interaction (such as dwell time) to play an increasingly important role in assessing reliability.

Conclusion: EEAT as a basis for sustainable SEO

SEO isn't just about keywords and backlinks anymore. Google wants to provide reliable, valuable and transparent information to its users. In 2025, EEAT will be the framework for achieving this.

By investing in experience, expertise, authority and reliability, you not only build rankings, but also a solid reputation among your target group. And that ultimately results in the most valuable traffic: visitors who really trust you.