What quality raters are told to look for
This is a set of ideas from the guidelines given to human quality raters. It is not a score in an algorithm, and it does describe what good looks like, which makes it worth reading.
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Short answer
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust are concepts from search quality rater guidelines, describing what a genuinely useful page looks like. They are not a direct ranking score. For a small business the practical version is showing who you are, what you have actually done, and why you can be believed.
What it actually is
A framework in the guidelines given to the people who assess search quality. Those assessments do not change individual rankings; they inform how systems are evaluated and improved.
So there is no score to optimize and no box to tick. What there is, is a clear public description of what a good page looks like.
Read that way it is genuinely useful, which is more than can be said for most of what is written about it.
There is no score to optimize and no box to tick. What there is, is a clear public description of what a good page looks like, which makes it worth reading.
Experience
Has the person writing actually done the thing. A review written by somebody who used the product, a guide written by somebody who has done the job.
This is the part small businesses are strongest on and least likely to show. You have fitted hundreds of these, and your website does not say so.
Specific detail is how experience shows. The thing that goes wrong on older properties, the part suppliers always get wrong, the question customers never think to ask.
This is the part small businesses are strongest on and least likely to show. You have fitted hundreds of these and your website does not say so.
Expertise
Does the author know the subject formally as well as practically. Qualifications, training, certifications, years in the trade.
For most subjects practical expertise is what matters. For subjects touching health, money or safety, formal credentials carry considerably more weight.
Say what yours are, plainly, where somebody would look for them.
Do not inflate them. A stretched qualification is the claim most likely to be checked, because the bodies that award them publish registers.
Authoritativeness
Is your business recognized as a source on this subject by anybody other than you. Mentions, links, memberships, local standing.
This is the hardest to build and the least controllable. It comes from doing work that gets noticed rather than from anything on the site.
What the site can do is make the existing evidence visible: real credentials, real associations, real work.
Most small businesses have more of this than their website shows. The gap between what you have done and what your site says is usually the cheapest thing to close.
Trust
The one the guidelines treat as most important. Is this business real, reachable, honest about what it offers and safe to deal with.
A real address or service area. A working contact route. Clear pricing. Honest claims. Legal pages that describe the actual business.
It is also the easiest to improve, because most small sites are missing several of those and each one is an afternoon.
It is the one the guidelines treat as most important and the easiest to improve, because most small sites are missing several basics.
What to do this week
Write a real about page saying who runs the business, how long you have done it, and what you have actually done.
Put your credentials where somebody would look, keep them current, and remove any that lapsed.
Make every claim on the site one you could support, and make contact easy without exposing an email address to scrapers.
- Write a real about page saying who runs the business
- Put your credentials where somebody would look for them
- Remove any credential that has lapsed
- Make every claim one you could support
- Make contact easy without exposing an email address
- Add the specific detail only somebody who does the work would know
How ours supports it
Pages here are written from a conversation about your business, which is how the specific experience gets onto the page rather than being replaced by generic description.
The builder refuses claims nobody can support, which is the trust half of this done by construction rather than by care.
Every page passes a check that runs before anything publishes, validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards.
The builder refuses claims nobody can support, which is the trust half done by construction — see honest claims.
Questions people ask
Is this a ranking factor?
Not directly. It is a framework from quality rater guidelines describing what good looks like, and it is useful precisely because it is a public description of quality.
Do I need an author biography on every page?
On pages where who wrote it matters, yes. For a small business a strong about page and clear ownership across the site usually does the work.
Which part matters most?
Trust, according to the guidelines themselves. It is also the easiest to improve, since most small sites are missing several basic trust signals.
How do I show experience?
Specific detail only somebody who has done the work would know. That is far more convincing than stating a number of years.
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