Google: Trust Seals On Your Site May Not Help With Communicating E-A-T

Apr 19, 2021 - 7:21 am 0 — by

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Google's John Mueller was asked "are seals a good way to improve the E-A-T of a website" By seals, the user means trust seals, like BBB seals, security seals, certification seals, anything that conveys a form of trust on the website. John Mueller basically implied no.

John said "I don’t know. I would actually focus on what actually provides, kind of authenticity to users, where users feel trust about a website that they are looking at." He added "taking random seals and copying and pasting them on a website, I don’t think that would really impress users and definitely won’t impress Googlebot."

Of course, he said "obviously if there are specific qualifications that you have, I think it makes sense to highlight that on a page." But does that impress Google? I don't know.

This came up at the 46:20 mark in this past Friday's video:

Question: Are seals a good way to improve the E-A-T of a website?

Answer: I don't know. I would actually focus on what actually provides, kind of authenticity to users, where users feel trust about a website that they are looking at.

Obviously if there are specific qualifications that you have, I think it makes sense to highlight that on a page but just taking random seals and copying and pasting them on a website, I don’t think that would really impress users and definitely won't impress Googlebot.

So that is something where I would focus more on what is actually acceptable by users and what makes sense there.

Forum discussion at YouTube Community.

 

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