Chapter 5 Quiz — E-E-A-T

24 self-check questions. Answer before opening the key at the bottom.

Multiple choice

Q1. E-E-A-T originates in: - A) Google's ranking algorithm source code - B) The Search Quality Rater Guidelines - C) A peer-reviewed information-retrieval paper - D) Google Search Console's help center

Q2. What do Google's human quality raters do? - A) Directly raise or lower the rankings of the sites they review - B) Evaluate sample results to help Google measure and improve its systems - C) Manually approve pages before they can appear in search - D) Assign each site a public E-E-A-T score

Q3. The extra "E" added to E-A-T in December 2022 stands for: - A) Engagement - B) Efficiency - C) Experience - D) Endorsement

Q4. Which member of E-E-A-T is described as the center of the framework? - A) Experience - B) Expertise - C) Authoritativeness - D) Trustworthiness

Q5. "YMYL" stands for: - A) Your Money or Your Life - B) Your Metrics, Your Learnings - C) Yield Management, Your Listing - D) Your Marketing, Your Leads

Q6. Which is the best description of authoritativeness? - A) How confidently a site describes itself - B) The number of pages a site publishes - C) The degree to which others recognize a site as a go-to source - D) How fast the site loads

Q7. Which statement about an "E-E-A-T score" is correct? - A) It appears in Search Console under Enhancements - B) Google publishes it monthly for every domain - C) There is no such Google score; any number you see is a third-party invention - D) It is one of the 200 confirmed ranking factors

Q8. For which query would Google's apparatus most likely demand the strongest E-E-A-T? - A) "best board games for two players" - B) "chocolate chip cookie recipe" - C) "how to safely stop taking a prescription medication" - D) "lyrics to a popular song"

Q9. A page has a real, credentialed author, is widely cited, and reflects genuine experience, but hides an undisclosed paid relationship with the products it recommends. Its overall E-E-A-T is: - A) High, because three of four components are strong - B) Low, because the trust failure drags the whole assessment down - C) Unaffected, since disclosures don't matter to Google - D) Impossible to judge

Q10. Building an "author entity" primarily means: - A) Reviving the rel="author" Google Authorship program - B) Making an author a recognizable, connectable identity so real reputation can inform trust - C) Guaranteeing an author photo appears in the SERP - D) Buying bylines on high-authority sites

Q11. Which is a legitimate way to strengthen authoritativeness? - A) Purchasing links from a network - B) Paying customers for five-star reviews - C) Earning genuine citations by publishing work worth referencing - D) Adding "voted #1 in the industry" to the homepage

Q12. HTTPS is best described as: - A) Proof that a page's content is accurate - B) A confirmed, lightweight signal that secures the connection, not the content's truth - C) A guaranteed ranking boost to page one - D) Irrelevant to trust

Q13. The August 2018 broad core update nicknamed "Medic" is associated in the SEO community with: - A) Mobile-first indexing - B) Core Web Vitals - C) YMYL and E-A-T - D) The retirement of meta keywords

Q14. Which pairing correctly matches a business type to its strongest E-E-A-T lever? - A) Local service business → credentialed medical reviewers - B) YMYL health publisher → "we've been in business since 1984" - C) Local service business → real licenses, address, and reviews made legible - D) YMYL health publisher → stock photography

Short answer

Q15. Explain the "flywheel" by which the concept of E-E-A-T influences rankings even though raters do not.

Q16. Give one example of a page that is high in Experience but low in formal Expertise, and one that is the reverse.

Q17. Why does Google raise the trust bar for YMYL topics? Answer in terms of Google's own incentives.

Q18. Name four concrete signals a site can use to make genuine E-E-A-T legible, and state one limit of any one of them.

Q19. What is "about/contact transparency," and why is its absence treated as a red flag?

Q20. A tool shows a site added author bios and then rankings rose. Explain the correlation-versus-causation trap in this observation.

Q21. Why can't E-E-A-T be bought, and which component is most tempting to try to purchase?

Q22. In one sentence each, state what an author bio can do and what it cannot do.

Q23. Rivertown Home Services is described as "rich in real trust whose website hid every bit of it." Give three specific facts Rivertown genuinely has that its site fails to show.

Q24. A client says, "Just get our E-E-A-T score to 90." Give the two-sentence honest reply you would send.

Answer key **Q1.** B — the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, a public document. **Q2.** B — they evaluate sample results to help Google measure and improve systems; they do not set individual rankings. **Q3.** C — Experience. **Q4.** D — Trustworthiness. **Q5.** A — Your Money or Your Life. **Q6.** C — recognition by others as a go-to source. **Q7.** C — no such Google score exists; third-party "scores" are vendor inventions. **Q8.** C — high-stakes health/safety content is YMYL. **Q9.** B — the undisclosed conflict is a trust failure; because Trust is the center, overall E-E-A-T is low. **Q10.** B — a recognizable, connectable identity; not a revival of Authorship and no guaranteed SERP photo. **Q11.** C — earning genuine citations by being worth referencing. **Q12.** B — it secures the connection, not the truth of the content; a confirmed, lightweight signal. **Q13.** C — YMYL and E-A-T (a community interpretation of a broad core update; Google did not officially name or attribute it). **Q14.** C — local business's strongest lever is legible licenses, address, and reviews. **Q15.** Google writes the rubric (Guidelines) → raters score sample results against it → engineers use those scores to test whether algorithm changes better approximate the rubric → better-approximating changes ship. So the *concept* steers ranking indirectly, as the target the automated signals chase. **Q16.** High Experience/low formal Expertise: a long-time home baker explaining bread (or a patient describing life with a condition). High Expertise/low Experience: a researcher who understands a disease's biochemistry but has never had it. (Other reasonable examples accepted.) **Q17.** Because a wrong answer on health, money, safety, or legal topics can cause real harm and destroy users' trust in Google itself; protecting that trust is core to Google's survival, so it demands stronger E-E-A-T there. **Q18.** Any four: named credentialed authors/author entity; citations to reputable sources; real reviews; about/contact transparency; HTTPS and site-level trust cues; off-site reputation. Example limit: an author bio can make expertise verifiable but cannot manufacture expertise that isn't there (and a fake bio is a liability). **Q19.** Clearly disclosing who is behind a site via real About and Contact pages (identity, credentials, physical address, a way to reach a human). Its absence is a red flag because the Guidelines tell raters to look for it, especially for sites that take money or give consequential advice — hidden ownership is a classic sign of an untrustworthy site. **Q20.** The sites that add real authors usually also invest in accuracy, editing, sourcing, and reputation; the whole bundle of genuine quality likely moved the rankings, with the bio the visible tip. "Bio → boost" is a causal story the observation alone doesn't support. **Q21.** Because trust and reputation are earned over time through genuine quality and what others independently say; purchased versions (bought links, fake reviews, fake bylines) are counterfeit, detectable, and against Google's guidelines. Authoritativeness is the most tempting to buy because it is the slowest to earn honestly. **Q22.** *Can:* give readers and systems something concrete to verify and connect to a track record. *Cannot:* create expertise that does not exist (a fabricated bio is a liability, not a shortcut). **Q23.** Any three: 40 years in business / tens of thousands of jobs (Experience); state trade licenses and certified master technicians (Expertise); strong local reputation and real reviews (Authoritativeness); five real branch addresses, licensed and insured (Trustworthiness) — none of which the current thin, stock-photo site displays. **Q24.** There is no Google "E-E-A-T score" to hit — any number a tool shows you is that vendor's guess, not a Google metric. What we *can* do is make your real expertise, experience, and reputation genuinely stronger and clearly visible, which is the durable way to earn the rankings a fake score never could.