E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — Google's quality signal framework documented in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. The framework guides both classic Google ranking and the source-selection step inside Google AI Overviews.
Experience is the first-hand demonstration that the content creator has actually used the product, visited the place, or worked through the process they describe. Expertise is depth of subject-matter knowledge demonstrated through the content. Authoritativeness is how the broader web community treats the creator or site as the canonical source on a topic. Trustworthiness is the foundational signal — accurate, transparent, secure content with clear publisher identity.
For SaaS and SEO tool sites, E-E-A-T concretely means: visible author bylines with named experts (not "editorial team"), author bio pages with credentials, transparent dates of publication and last update, clear publisher identity in the footer and Organization schema, external citations to peer-reviewed and authoritative sources, and consistent brand terminology across the site.
The framework is not a single ranking factor but a meta-evaluation that influences many ranking signals. A page with strong E-E-A-T outranks competitors with thinner author signals even at parity on traditional on-page factors. For AI Overviews specifically, E-E-A-T is the strongest source-trust signal Google uses to decide which sources to quote.