In the latest episode of Ask an SEO, Brian Harnish discusses YMYL and E-A-T in further detail.
There is even evidence directly from Danny Sullivan himself where he says that Google does not use E-A-T or YMYL in the algorithm.
Danny explains here that Google quality raters have zero impact on the Google search algorithms:
“Once raters have done this research, they then provide a quality rating for each page. It’s important to note that this rating does not directly impact how this page or site ranks in Search. Nobody is deciding that any given source is “authoritative” or “trustworthy.” In particular, pages are not assigned ratings as a way to determine how well to rank them. Indeed, that would be an impossible task and a poor signal for us to use. With hundreds of billions of pages that are constantly changing, there’s no way humans could evaluate every page on a recurring basis.
Instead, ratings are a data point that, when taken in aggregate, helps us measure how well our systems are working to deliver great content that’s aligned with how people—across the country and around the world—evaluate information.”
This is not a difficult concept to grasp. It’s time to stop spreading the E-A-T and YMYL nonsense as if it applies to SEO.
Be sure to watch the video today:
Ask an SEO Episode 15 Transcript
Today’s question is: are YMYL and E-A-T just concepts, really?
Yes, they are really just concepts. First of all, Danny Sullivan himself says so here that the quality raters have no impact on Google’s ranking algorithm.
None, zip, zilch, nada.
So really, when it comes to E-A-T and YMYL, they are oftentimes a kitchen sink approach done by SEOs who really do not know any better in terms of implementing SEO specifically.
So and while that’s technically going to work, I mean, in a kitchen sink approach, you basically throw everything at a website and hope it sticks.
It’s really not as effective as strategically going after the known SEO ranking factors.
So really, it’s like saying “woozle wuzzle” or something like that, then with E-A-T it’s really all it is, is a concept. Any time you see something that somebody’s trying to sell E-A-T, you might want to wonder what exactly they’re trying to sell anyway.
So that’s not real SEO anyway.
That’s it for today’s Episode 15 of Ask an SEO.
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This is Brian Harnish signing off. Have a great day!!
