Digital Minute takes a closer look at Google’s recent EAT updates, and how some ecommerce brands have lost out from the new standards on expertise, authority and trust.

Google updated its search quality evaluator guidelines last month, placing a greater focus on the “E-A-T” principles of expertise, authority and trust. Those new policies have already had a major impact in some key search markets. With major brands in some key niches losing visibility, we analysed at what it means for your search strategy.

Digital Minute looks at what has changed, and what this could mean for search and content marketing strategy.

Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Richard and on this episode of Digital Minute, we’re looking at who has gained and lost out from Google’s recent update to its Search Quality Evaluator guidelines.

In July, Google updated the guidelines that it gives to its Search Quality Evaluators on how they should judge a page’s expertise, authority and trust. Since that update, some big brands have seen big drops in visibility.

In some industry sectors we have seen brands lose almost all of their organic visibility in the last few weeks, with the sports supplements industry one that we noticed was hit particularly hard, although there were notable drops in the automotive and personal finance sector.

In almost all of the cases we analysed, the changes saw ecommerce and commercial pages being replaced by informational websites, with sites such as WebMD and What Car seeing their organic visibility increasing. When we look at these results, along with the updated guidance Google has issued, there’s a clear trend here.

These measures are raising the bar significantly in terms of how Google is judging the expertise, authority and trustworthiness of content, and we’ve shared out full analysis – and opinion of what it means – on the blog.

Thanks for watching, I’m Richard Hird, and that was your Digital Minute.

How to subscribe

To ensure you don’t miss an episode, we've ensured you can subscribe in whatever ways suits you. You'll find Digital Minute on:

We hope you find the series useful and would to hear your comments and feedback.
youtubeitunes soundcloud stitcher

Don't miss another Digital Minute