Included in Google’s search quality rater guidelines, E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a mix of factors that help Google determine if the content is relevant and helpful enough for users, thereby prioritizing it in search results.

Designing actions to optimize E-E-A-T on a website is essential for most projects. It is equally important to analyze the impact and performance of these actions in order to draw conclusions, make improvements, and refine strategies. In this article, we will explore some of the most relevant E-E-A-T metrics that we can analyze via Google Analytics (GA4).

Within the E-E-A-T family, “Experience” refers to the level of first-hand or life experience that the content creator possesses on a given topic.

There are different ways to analyze through GA4 how is the performance of the actions implemented on the website to demonstrate this experience:

• Monitor the review page’s performance

Site owners can demonstrate the experience with a product through different types of content on the site, such as “How to” pages, collaborations with influencers, guides, blogs, and more.

The performance of these pages can be analyzed via the section Reports > Engagement > Landing page – this section shows the first page visitors land on within the site and the number of visitors to these pages.  

Here, site owners can filter by individual URLs or group them according to URL taxonomy, allowing for the analysis of key metrics such as the number of sessions, average session duration, and the most relevant events in these pages.

Example of a blog that shows experience in a site

In addition, by including the ‘Page path and screen class’ dimension, you can study the user’s journey within the website.

Example of a blog that shows experience in a site + ‘Page path and screen class dimension’

It is also possible to analyze what a user did before or after visiting a page or screen by creating a path exploration report: 

Example path exploration report. Node: ‘Page title and screen class’

• Monitor User Reviews

Through Google Analytics, it is also possible to analyze user ratings and interactions with the reviews on a site. The data may differ depending on how reviews are displayed or configured on the website.

For instance, user reviews can be monitored via custom events, using tags created through Google Tag Manager on buttons.

Through events, we can also examine which types of reviews users click to view for each product. For example, in the following example, the site owner could create events using the ‘Click text’ variable based on the review score or to simply analyze the total number of reviews.

To evaluate the impact of user reviews on external sites, such as directory sites or similar platforms, we can analyze the traffic source from which users arrive. This can be done by filtering specific URLs in Acquisition > User / Traffic Acquisition > Referral, and also the dimension ‘Session source’, which shows the origin of the traffic.

Traffic acquisition > Referral

Expertise refers to the degree to which the content creator has the required knowledge or skill for the topic.

• Monitor Author Pages

A detailed “About the Author” page is an action that helps to emphasize the author’s expertise on the topic. We can monitor how these pages perform on a site:

On one side, via Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens or Landing Pages, we can filter and analyze the traffic that comes directly from these pages.

Engagement > Pages and screens and then, filtering by URLs that include the word ‘Author’ (Autor in Catalan).

The traffic once users are on these pages can also be tracked. In GA4, we can measure user engagement within these expert pages, such as scrolling behavior, clicks (e.g., to social networks, awards, certifications), emails sent, and more.

Additionally, like we showed before in this article, using a path exploration report, we can also analyze user interactions on the website.

Authoritativeness refers to the extent to which the content creator or website is recognized as a reliable source for the topic.

By becoming a leading company in a market, a site can strengthen their brand authority. There are several ways to monitor via GA4 this authority. 

• Monitor Traffic from Relevant Sites

As mentioned, by navigating to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition > Referral, you can analyze traffic coming from other websites.

To focus on the most relevant sites for your business, you can include specific filters, such as those that target .com or country-code-level domains that are a priority for the business.

If you want to add different filters to include or exclude specific sites, you can do so by customizing the GA4 reports:

Customized Report. Filter: Session source contains ‘.com’

Other options for analyzing referral traffic with different filters include using Looker Studio, Google Sheets, or similar tools for data analysis and visualization.

In these cases, it is advisable, whenever possible, to incorporate UTMs into the links on these external websites. This will allow for a more detailed analysis of the traffic.

• Monitor Brand Traffic

Monitoring how brand traffic evolves can help analyze brand authority—it even allows for analysis by country or time period, and more.

To analyze brand traffic, it is important first to link Google Search Console with GA4.

Next, go to Reports > Search Console > Queries, where you can see the number of organic Google Search clicks from a query.

By filtering for the brand name of the site, it is possible to view the total volume of organic clicks, as well as the impressions, CTR, and average position of queries related to the brand. 

Additionally, we can filter by country or compare with previous periods to observe temporal changes over time:

Website Brand Name Analysis – Last 6 Months

This allows for the analysis of how the brand authority of a website evolves.

• Monitor Local Traffic

Websites can also demonstrate authority through the creation of local profiles, such as a Google Business Profile. With this profile, it will be possible to analyze how the company’s authority evolves in a specific location.

By using UTMs on the links or products within the Google Business Profile, businesses can track the performance of this traffic in a more specific way via GA4.

As indicated by Google, trust is considered the degree to which the site is accurate, honest, secure and reliable. Several actions can be implemented on a site to build trust and encourage users to rely on it. The performance of these actions at different stages can be analyzed through GA4.

• Monitor Site Security

For a user to make a purchase or convert on a website, they must perceive the site as secure. By monitoring and analyzing the different stages of a user’s purchase journey, we can evaluate how they progress and identify sections with better or worse performance.

While the specific stages may vary depending on the type of website, it is recommended to analyze the user journey during the purchase process. 

By tagging buttons—such as those for shipping information, starting checkout, or entering data—or by analyzing individual URLs, we can use path exploration reports to examine user interactions at each phase and identify areas for improvement.

Example starting checkout process on a site

Path exploration report – User’s journey during the checkout process

• Evaluate if the Site is Reliable

Another way to analyze whether users trust a website is to evaluate interactions as well as the user journey from key individual URLs that help convey trust, such as:

• FAQs page
• About me / About the company page
• Contact page

In Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens, you can analyze individual URLs visited by users or screens in the case of mobile apps. From here, site owners can track either the interactions on the page or the user’s journey using path exploration reports, as shown before.

To effectively analyze the metrics of the actions implemented on a website to demonstrate E-E-A-T, it is important to precisely identify and outline all the actions linked to these strategies—since they may vary beyond those mentioned above.

Whether the actions are meant to communicate experience, expertise, authority, or trust, it is advisable to identify those most relevant to the business and monitor them accordingly.