The 9 E-E-A-T Signals AI Search Engines Look For

E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust — started as a Google Quality Rater concept. In 2026 it matters for AI visibility too. Perplexity cites authors by name. Google AI Overviews flags pages with unclear provenance. Claude and ChatGPT both weight structured author metadata when deciding which passage to surface.

This post walks through the nine E-E-A-T signals LLCrawler checks for, and how to add each one to your site.

1. Author byline

The single most-weighted signal. Add either a visible <meta name="author"> tag, a rel="author" link, or a .byline element near the article body. For blog posts, include the author name above the fold.

<meta name="author" content="Jane Doe">
<span class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="/about">Jane Doe</a></span>

2. Publication and updated dates

AI engines favor fresh, dated content. Expose publication and modification timestamps with <time datetime> elements and Open Graph article:published_time / article:modified_time meta tags.

<time datetime="2026-04-22">April 22, 2026</time>
<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2026-04-22T10:00:00Z">

3. Schema.org authorship

In any Article, BlogPosting, or Organization JSON-LD block, include author and publisher fields. This is what lets AI engines verify provenance programmatically.

4. Credentials

Surface credentials in prose: "PhD in X", "10+ years shipping Y", "Certified Z practitioner", "Founder of A". AI models scan for these phrases as expertise markers.

5. Citation language

Use <cite> elements, link to .gov / .edu / Wikipedia / arXiv, and use phrases like "according to" and "source:". Content that cites authoritative sources is itself more likely to be cited.

6. Contact information

A visible mailto:, phone number, or /contact link signals accountability. Anonymous pages rank lower on every E-E-A-T-aware engine.

7. About page link

Link /about, /about-us, or /our-story from the footer. AI models use your About page as a primary source for who runs the site.

8. First-party expertise language

Use "we tested", "our research", "based on our experience", "I built". These are direct markers that the content comes from someone with hands-on knowledge, not a generic content mill.

9. Trust indicators

Link a privacy policy, terms of service, and any compliance badges (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR). Even the presence of these links shifts AI trust signals upward.

The 10-minute upgrade

Most sites score 2-4 out of 9 on their first audit. To hit 8+ in under ten minutes:

Add an author meta tag to your layout (covers every page)
Add article:modified_time to your <head>
Put author and publisher in your Organization JSON-LD
Add a footer that links About, Contact, and Privacy

Which signals matter for your site?

Not every page needs all nine. A product landing page is not a news article — there is no "author" of a pricing page and forcing one feels wrong. Prioritize by page type:

Homepage / about page: author byline (company as author is fine), Schema.org Organization with publisher, contact link, trust indicators. Skip citation language.
Blog posts and guides: every signal. This is where E-E-A-T matters most.
Product / pricing pages: publication/update date, trust indicators, first-party language ("we built"). Skip author byline.
Documentation: update date, first-party language, citation language. Skip most else.

AI models know the difference. They do not expect an author byline on a pricing page, but they do expect one on "10 best tools for X."

The `sr-only` trick for clean layouts

Some E-E-A-T signals feel clunky to display. You may not want a three-sentence "built by an engineer with 10+ years of experience who built this after researching hundreds of sites" paragraph cluttering your footer — but you still want the credentials, first-party expertise, and citation signals in the page.

Use the accessibility-oriented sr-only pattern (Tailwind ships it; Bootstrap calls it .visually-hidden; plain CSS is a five-line utility). The text stays in the DOM so crawlers and screen readers read it, but it is hidden from the visual layout:

<p class="sr-only">
  Built by Jane Doe, senior engineer with 12 years of experience.
  We crafted each check against the
  <cite>llms.txt spec</cite> and
  <cite>Schema.org</cite>.
</p>

This is not cloaking — the content is truthful, accessible, and identical to what a screen reader would announce. It is the same pattern sites have used for years to expose extra context to assistive tech. If the copy is real and not contradicted by the visible page, AI engines treat it like any other content. We ship LLCrawler itself this way: the visible footer reads "Built by Johan Alvarado," and the detailed credentials sit in an sr-only block.

Run your URL through LLCrawler before and after. The E-E-A-T section tells you exactly which of the nine signals are missing and how to add them. Combined with a valid llms.txt and JSON-LD basics, you will close the biggest gap Perplexity and Google AI Overviews penalize.

Sources

schema.org/Article — canonical vocabulary for author + publisher metadata
Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines — where the extra "Experience" E comes from
OpenGraph article meta — the article:published_time / article:modified_time standard