A contractor is looking for a new accountant. Google sends him to a guide on example-accounting.com, the article is good, his question is answered. Before he picks up the phone, he does three things without thinking about it: he scrolls to the bottom to see who runs the site. He looks for a phone number and an address that does not look like a mailbox. And he types the firm's name plus "reviews" into Google. If any of those three steps turns up nothing, or something that does not add up, he calls the next firm. The article brought him in. Trust is what would have kept him.
That moment is what the T in E-E-A-T is about. This piece walks through the signals visitors and Google's quality raters use to decide whether a website deserves trust, and ends with an order of work for the next few weeks.
Trust is the letter the others depend on
In the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the handbook for Google's human testers, Trust sits explicitly at the center of the E-E-A-T family. Experience, expertise and authoritativeness contribute to trust, they do not replace it. If a page is untrustworthy for any reason, the guidelines say it has low E-E-A-T, however competent it looks. Google's own example is a financial scammer: an expert in scams, and still nobody you should trust.
How much trust a page needs depends on its purpose. A shop needs secure payment and reliable customer service, a product review has to be honest, a guide on health or money has to be accurate. For topics like these, Google's documentation says its systems give E-E-A-T even more weight. What that means for specific kinds of businesses is covered in YMYL pages.
To set expectations: E-E-A-T is not a score and not a single ranking factor, and rater scores do not feed directly into rankings. The guidelines do show very precisely which pages Google wants at the top. For the full picture, see E-E-A-T signals.
Three questions raters and visitors ask first
What is this page for? Raters judge the purpose of a page first, then how much harm it could do, and only then how well it achieves its purpose. A page that deceives people about its real purpose lands in the lowest rating.
Who is responsible? It should be clear who stands behind the website and who created the content. If a page on health, money or safety, or a site that handles sensitive data, has no such information at all, that alone is enough for the lowest rating.
How do I reach them? How much contact information is needed depends on the site. For anything involving money, the guidelines call it extremely important, and any site that handles passwords, personal data or payments must provide extensive contact information.
Raters are allowed to take local conventions into account. If you operate in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, that convention is the Impressum, a legally required page that names the operator and how to reach them. Elsewhere it is your About and Contact pages. The guidelines do not name any specific page, but this is the obvious reading.
Contact details are the foundation, not a formality
Whatever your country requires, the trust logic is the same: a real name, a real address, a phone number someone actually answers, and a way to reach you quickly by email. If you operate in Germany, the legal basis has been § 5 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG, the German act implementing the EU Digital Services Act) since 14 May 2024, replacing the old Telemedia Act with largely the same requirements. Depending on the business, a supervisory authority or professional chamber is added; what regulated professions have to disclose is covered in YMYL pages. Two leftovers are still common in autumn 2026: a reference to the old § 5 TMG, and a link to the EU online dispute resolution platform, which was shut down on 20 July 2025. According to German chambers of commerce, a leftover link can itself draw a legal warning letter.
For trust, the obligation matters less than what it makes possible. Naming your chamber and register number invites people to check, and anyone can look you up in the insurance broker register, a chamber directory or the medical association's search. A phone number that gets answered and an address that matches your Business Profile and directory listings count for more than any "We look forward to hearing from you".
None of this is legal advice. For questions about your own disclosures, ask your chamber, trade association or a lawyer.
Disclose what people want to know: ads, affiliates, AI
Advertising and affiliate links. Commercial content should be recognisable as such, and in Germany the law says so directly: § 6 DDG requires it, and according to a July 2024 Munich regional court ruling (not yet final), posts with affiliate links must be recognisable as advertising already in their preview text. The rater guidelines name conflicts of interest explicitly as a reason for less trust, for example a manufacturer "reviewing" its own product.
AI in your writing. Google does not require AI content to be labelled, but recommends being open about how content was created wherever readers would wonder. The rater guidelines show how not to do it: a parenting guide that mentions only in its terms of service that "some articles" were AI generated, without saying which. That is part of an example for the lowest rating.
In the EU, Article 50 of the AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026. Chatbots are clearly covered: people must be able to tell they are talking to an AI. The obligation sits primarily with the provider of the system, but a visible notice in the chat window on your site belongs there anyway. AI-generated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest has to be labelled, with an exception when a human has reviewed it and a person or company holds editorial responsibility. For a small business's reviewed service or guide pages, our reading is that the obligation usually does not apply, though how "public interest" will be interpreted is not settled. Be careful with AI images of real people, such as a generated "team photo". Again, this is not legal advice. Incidentally, the exception rewards exactly what E-E-A-T asks for: human review and a name that stands behind it.
Sources, dates, corrections: honesty people can see
Cite your sources. Google's guidance on helpful content explicitly asks about clear sourcing. Link to the primary source, meaning the statute, the manufacturer's documentation or the study, not the blog that wrote about it.
Show an honest date. Google recommends a clearly visible, labelled date ("Published", "Updated") with matching values in your structured data. In the same guidance, Google asks site owners whether they change dates to make pages seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed, and lists that as a warning sign. Often there is no intent behind it at all: some themes reset the modified date on every page view because they print the current time instead of the stored date. Then every page says "updated today". For sitemaps, Google says it only uses a modification date if it is consistently and verifiably accurate. A date that is always new loses its value as a signal and looks dishonest to readers. Change it when the content changes, not for a fixed typo.
Correct mistakes and show it. Google has no specific rule for this, but the logic is clear: the guidelines require information on health and money to be accurate, and raters are told to dig further when content looks outdated. When you find an error, fix it and add one line: "Corrected on 12 September 2026: the deadline is 31 July, not 31 May." That reads like someone who maintains their content. How to rework older pages systematically is covered in Update existing content.
Reviews: show how they came about
Customer reviews on your own site come with rules, too. If you operate in Germany, § 5b(3) of the Unfair Competition Act has required since May 2022 that anyone showing consumer reviews must state whether and how they ensure the reviews come from real customers. It is a duty to inform, not a duty to verify: if you do not check, you have to say so, and according to a Düsseldorf regional court ruling from February 2026 the notice belongs right next to the reviews. A line like "These reviews come from our Google Business Profile; we do not check whether the authors were our customers" is more honest than a star widget with no context.
Commissioning fake reviews is prohibited outright under German law, and so is claiming reviews are from real customers without reasonable checks. Google draws the line even tighter for Business Profiles: any incentive is banned, discounts and freebies included, as are reviews from employees. On violations, Google can pause new reviews, hide existing ones and show a warning on the profile. Asking customers without offering anything in return is fine. How to make that a habit is covered in Get found locally.
Medical practices and health professions face extra limits. German advertising law for health services restricts third-party testimonials when they are misleading or abusive, so "patient stories" are riskier than many marketing guides suggest. Qualifications and factual information are the safer route. Not legal advice either.
How raters research your reputation, and how to do it yourself
The guidelines make reputation research mandatory for every page quality rating. What a website says about itself is to be read with scepticism. Raters look for independent sources: news, reviews, forums, independent organisations. For health and money, what experts say counts most, and recommendations from professional associations are strong evidence. Reviews are to be read for content, not just counted; a few negative ones are normal, credible reports of fraud weigh heavily. Traffic figures from tools such as Similarweb are to be ignored.
The guidelines even spell out the search patterns. Run them for your own business, here with a made-up physiotherapy practice:
| Search | What it shows |
|---|---|
example-physio -site:example-physio.com | what others write about you |
"example-physio.com" -site:example-physio.com | where your domain is mentioned |
example-physio reviews -site:example-physio.com | reviews on other platforms |
Your own social profiles do not count as independent. And there is relief for small businesses: if little turns up, the guidelines say that is neither a good nor a bad sign. Raters then pay more attention to the remaining criteria, meaning content, transparency and information about the operator.
Reputation is built outside your website
You cannot write what others say about you, but you can make sure it is findable. For most small businesses that means professional chambers and registers, trade associations and guilds, the local paper and your Google Business Profile. Google itself says its systems look at whether other prominent websites link to or refer to a piece of content.
Check that your entry with the chamber or association is correct and points to your site, and link back to those entries from your About page. A local news story about your new apprentice or the move to a bigger workshop is worth more than ten listings in directories nobody reads.
What shops and service businesses need to show on top
For online shops, raters explicitly check the policies on payment, exchanges and returns. Show the total price and shipping costs before checkout. If you sell to consumers in Germany, a "withdraw from contract" button has also been mandatory since 19 June 2026 for online contracts with a right of withdrawal (§ 356a of the German Civil Code). It is both an obligation and a visible customer service signal.
Service businesses and practices sell the person doing the work. An older eye-tracking study by Nielsen Norman Group found that visitors look at photos of real staff and skip generic stock photos.
| Shop | Service business, practice | |
|---|---|---|
| Who is behind it | operator details, named contact | team with real names, photos and roles |
| Reachability | phone with service hours | phone, address, hours matching the Business Profile |
| What can be verified | shipping, delivery time, payment methods before checkout | qualifications, chamber, guild, association with link |
| What convinces | real product photos, returns in plain language | case studies with numbers and a time frame |
How to present your team and authors so their experience and expertise show is covered in Author pages.
HTTPS is the minimum, trust badges are a risk
The rater guidelines expect shops to have secure payment systems. HTTPS is the precondition, and it is so standard by now that its absence stands out, because browsers visibly flag unencrypted pages. HTTPS does not create trust, but missing it destroys trust. Also check that old http:// addresses redirect cleanly.
Be cautious with badges. In Germany, sustainability labels have only been allowed since 27 September 2026 if they rest on a certification scheme with independent monitoring or are set by a public authority, and anyone advertising with test seals must cite where the test was published. Only show badges whose issuing body is one click away; a self-designed "quality guaranteed" badge is at best useless. Not legal advice.
The usual trust gaps on small websites
This list comes from practice, not from a statistic:
- Stock photos of smiling teams instead of real staff.
- An About page without a single name.
- Guides without author, date or sources, of all places on tax and health topics.
- A modified date that says "today" on every visit.
- Outdated legal notices that still link to the defunct EU dispute platform.
- Star widgets with no note on how reviews are checked.
- Different addresses, phone numbers or hours on the website and Business Profile.
- An AI chatbot that does not say it is an AI.
- Unreviewed AI text with wrong deadlines or expired funding programmes.
Where to start
- Run the three searches from the table for your business and note what a stranger would find.
- Check your legal and contact pages: current law, no dispute platform link, chamber, register and authority where they apply.
- Align address, phone number and hours across website, Business Profile and chamber listing.
- Put one sentence under every review widget saying where the reviews come from and whether you check them.
- Label ads and affiliate links, and add an AI notice to any chatbot window.
- Load two pages a few days apart and compare the modified date. If it changed without you changing anything, the template is the problem.
- Replace stock photos with real ones and list chamber or association memberships with links.
- Add author, date and sources to your three most important guides, and fix errors with a correction note.
How Traffalyzer helps
First the limit: Traffalyzer cannot measure trust or E-E-A-T, because no such value exists. What it can check are the technical prerequisites.
The scan checks whether your site runs on HTTPS and measures how many pages carry Schema.org structured data. It counts how many pages have a published or modified date in their metadata, and it flags modified dates that are not credible: a page reports a fresh date, but Traffalyzer has not seen any change to the content for weeks. That is the typical pattern of a theme resetting the date on every page view. The scan also counts pages with author metadata (meta name="author" or article:author). According to Google's documentation, Google does not use these tags; what counts is the visible byline and the Article markup. The number is a hint for other systems such as AI assistants, feed readers and social networks, and an indicator of whether authors are maintained at all.
The "Content to refresh" feature suggests aging pages for revision, and the connected Search Console shows whether rankings move after your changes. Your legal pages, review notices and reputation outside your site are not checked by Traffalyzer. That stays manual work with the list above.
Frequently asked questions
Is trust a ranking factor?
Not as a single value. Google says E-E-A-T is not a specific ranking factor, but its systems use a mix of signals that identify content with good E-E-A-T, and Google calls trust the most important part. For health, money and safety topics it carries more weight.
Do Google's raters really check the legal notice or contact page?
The rater guidelines require that it is clear who is responsible for a website and how to contact them, and they allow for local conventions. In Germany that points to the Impressum, elsewhere to About and Contact pages. No specific page is named in the guidelines.
Do I have to label AI-generated text?
Google does not require it, but recommends being transparent about how content is made. Since August 2026, the EU AI Act requires labelling only for AI text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, and not even there if a human reviewed it and someone holds editorial responsibility. Chatbots, on the other hand, must be recognisable as AI. This is not legal advice.
What do I need to say next to reviews on my site?
In Germany, a note right next to the reviews on whether and how you check that they come from real customers. If you do not check, say exactly that. Buying reviews is prohibited, and Google also bans incentives such as discounts on Business Profiles.
Can I update the modified date for small edits?
Better not. Google explicitly asks whether site owners change dates to make pages seem fresh without substantial changes to the content. A new date belongs to a real revision, not to a fixed typo.
My business is barely mentioned online. Is that a problem?
Not in itself. According to the rater guidelines, missing reputation information on small websites indicates neither high nor low quality. Contact details, transparency and content then weigh more. Listings with your chamber, association or local press still help, because they make you verifiable.