E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google asks its human quality raters to assess.
What it is not
It is not a ranking factor, and Google has said so in as many words: “While E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful.”
Nor does rater scoring feed the algorithm directly. Google’s own comparison is that rater data works “as a restaurant might get feedback cards from diners” — it tells them whether the system is working, not which page to rank.
So an “E-E-A-T score” is not a thing that exists, and any audit that reports one has invented it.
Source: Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.
Why it still matters
Because it is the clearest published description of what Google is trying to reward, written by the people trying to reward it. Read it as a specification of intent rather than a checklist to tick — and note that of the four, Google says trust is the one the others exist to support.
For a local service business the practical version is unglamorous: a named human accountable for the work, evidence they have actually done it, and nothing on the site that a customer could catch out.
Related: structured data, entity resolution, generative engine optimization.