TL;DR

The easy mass production of content by AI has caused a severe crisis of trust in search results, leading users to seek “real information” elsewhere (e.g. appending ‘reddit’ to searches). EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) is the essential, proven solution. The techniques that successfully established trust for high-stakes YMYL topics must be strengthened and extended across all search areas to allow Google to regain user trust and act as a reliable source of information.

Introduction

In the last blog we pushed live, we talked about the ‘great EEATification’ of search – in this one, we’re going to talk a little more about what that means and why it has to happen. We’re not going to do a full section on “what is EEAT”, because we’re writing on the off-chance that someone somewhere actually reads this, not to try to rank for the term (god knows we’d have little chance against the million tools and competitors that have been trying for years), but for anyone that doesn’t know, EEAT stands for “experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness” – it used to just be EAT, but then experience was added, who knows why – it’s unlikely you’ll have expertise without experience, but who are we to argue with Google?

Why we keep going on about EEAT

It’s not even just here, or just lately (sadly, for all of our loved-ones), we’ve been going on about EEAT since before even EAT was a thing – but there’s a genuinely good reason for it. For the last decade or more (probably more, but it gets a bit foggy at our age), Google has implemented a huge number of algorithmic updates which have specifically aimed to improve what has historically been known as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) sectors, which include things like finance and medical information – effectively anything that impacts (you guessed it) your money, or your life.

These have largely been successful – in fact, to greater or lesser degrees, most Google updates and improvements had a generally positive impact on the quality of SERPs (if not on the quality of the YMYL situations of individual SEOs) until, somewhere around COVID, the search ecosystem just broke (along with the brains of about half the world, it seemed) in the way of all large systems – slowly, slowly, then all at once.

There was a huge rise in mis- and disinformation, the practice of parasite SEO went into overdrive, and it seemed the internet as a whole was growing tired of SERPs filled with over-optimised, under-useful SEO copy (see our criticism of this in the same, previously linked article) as everyone began appending ‘reddit’ or similar onto searches to see real information. This has now reached the stage that, in an Ofcom report from 2024, 71% of respondents claim to have experienced mis- or disinformation online in the previous month.

EEAT is the answer to all of these issues – and it’s the reason we bend people’s ears about it whenever anyone expresses even a mild interest, and if we can understand this, Google knows it too.

A quick analogy (80s nostalgia alert)

Back in the long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and the sound of a copper-line modem rang out in only the most swanky of homes, if you wanted to know who to listen to, you had to ask people you trusted. There were adverts, of course, but if (and we’ll demonstrate our class solidarity here) you needed to decide whether to order from the Littlewoods, Kays or Index catalogue, you asked someone that had accounts (and, if your credit was particularly bad, you had a local fixer that would order on behalf of the estate), and you’d hear the horror stories of their customer service experience, or how easy it was to return a broken purchase.

Word of mouth is extremely difficult in the digital age – we have reviews, of course, but spammers have bottomed out trust in those, and UGC agencies have done the same there. Along with the enshittification of social media platforms, there are precious few places a customer can go (now that nobody would dream of talking to another human directly) to get impartial information about a brand. That word of mouth trust was increasingly handed to Google, and Google respected that trust by allowing absolutely any brand to advertise above their search results.

Brands now operate in an increasingly trustless online world – where marketplace platforms such as Amazon are able to continue to compete mostly because of brand recognition and perceived trustworthiness. Nobody really wants to buy from Bezos – but it’s easy, secure and you mostly get what you’ve ordered (and they have one of the better review moderation systems about, for the little that’s worth). In the US, for example, trust in major tech brands is greater than in the government (though this is from 2024, so who know what that looks like now).

EEAT is the way Google can handle growing dissatisfaction with search, and properly (ironically) earn the trust that is given to SERPs. Google can become the woman down the road that has the best information on deals and interest rates, that knows the catalogues inside out and the best place to get whichever cassette or VHS player and set of brown and orange patterned curtains you were after. 

Extending beyond YMYL

The end result of an almost limitless (while the companies remain solvent at least) AI content at scale is, at least to us, pretty simple – publishers and search engines face a crisis of trust that for publishers means an ongoing decline in search traffic and, therefore, revenue, and, for search engines, an equally cataclysmic loss of trust in search as a source of information. 

We won’t get into the blame game here – there’s enough to go around – but regardless of how blame is distributed, there needs to be a significant improvement in search, or a complete change in the way people search for information and subsequent improvements there. As things stand, it looks like Google has decided to throw everything at Gemini and are clearly banking on that sea change – and several . 

We’ve long been believers in a trajectory that moves towards a personalised, assistant filtered internet – but trust is the moat across which a bridge will need to be built from the present to future of search – in no small part because a word cloud of responses to a UK Government survey on AI looks like this:

There is little doubt that AI search has increased (though Google dropping slightly below 90% market share is probably not the sign that search is dead that AI boosters would have you believe), but in a Which? survey, fewer than 30% of users on any AI platform professed to using it because of the quality of search results.

As things stand, trust in these platforms remains relatively high (according to the same Which? survey), but it remains to be seen how much of this is novelty, and how this trust holds up over time and as associated data breaches become better known publicly.

In fact, a ‘tech expert’ for Which? – Andrew Laughlin – stated the following in a press release that followed the linked survey:

“Everyday use of AI is soaring, but we’ve found that when it comes to getting the answers you need, the devil is in the details. Our research uncovered far too many inaccuracies and misleading statements for comfort, especially when leaning on AI for important issues like financial or legal queries.

“When using AI, always make sure to define your question clearly, and check the sources the AI is drawing answers from. For particularly complex issues, always seek professional advice – particularly for medical queries, before making major financial decisions or embarking on legal action.”

You know where trust has remained high? YMYL services – the very places that EEAT has long been an important ranking factor. I won’t belabour the point any further than this: if we want people to trust the information they’re getting, whether from search engines or AI, we need to implement and strengthen the very techniques and practices that have, at least to some extent, already worked.

Final thoughts

We’ll go into how to establish EEAT in another blog (probably soon now that we’re on our high horse about it and already have a million tabs open), but the long and short of this is that it doesn’t really matter whether traditional search is dead, alive, on its last legs or anything in between – the things that will help brands to succeed online, whatever the future brings, is the proper and complete communication (to humans and to robots) of trust signals which is exactly what SEO, and marketing more broadly, have spent decades trying to perfect.

In short – the playing field may change, but the sport remains the same, and that means we just need to keep playing by the rules. If you’d like our help winning at this particular game – why not dop us a message?