E-E-A-T Scores by Industry: Which Sectors Lead?
Google's E-E-A-T framework — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — is how the search quality rater guidelines evaluate content. It's also increasingly how AI answer engines decide which sources to cite. But E-E-A-T is notoriously hard to measure: it's a qualitative framework, not a checklist.
We built LLMSE's E-E-A-T analyzer to change that. It detects over 50 concrete signals across the four pillars — from author schemas and credentials to privacy policies and citation patterns — and produces a score from 0 to 100.
We ran it against 30 major websites across 10 industries. The results reveal a consistent pattern: most sites do well on Experience and Expertise, but Trustworthiness is the universal weak point — and it drags entire sectors down.
The Dataset
We selected 30 globally recognized websites spanning ten industries:
| Sector | Sites Analyzed |
|---|---|
| News & Media | NYTimes, BBC, Forbes |
| Technology | GitHub, Stack Overflow, Microsoft |
| E-commerce | Amazon, Walmart, Target |
| Education | Harvard, Coursera, Wikipedia |
| Healthcare | Healthline, WebMD, WHO |
| Government | GOV.UK, IRS, CDC |
| Finance & Banking | Chase, Bank of America, PayPal |
| Travel & Hospitality | Booking.com, Airbnb, TripAdvisor |
| Social & Entertainment | Reddit, IMDb, Spotify |
| Real Estate | Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin |
Each site was evaluated for Experience signals (first-person language, author bios, case studies, testimonials), Expertise signals (credentials, certifications, Person schema, topic depth), Authoritativeness signals (Organization schema, citations, awards, media mentions), and Trustworthiness signals (HTTPS, privacy policy, contact information, terms of service, cookie consent). Scores are weighted: Trustworthiness counts the most (35%), followed by Expertise and Authoritativeness (25% each), then Experience (15%).
The Big Picture: 584,000 URLs
Before our 30-site deep dive, here's the broader context. LLMSE has scored over 584,000 URLs for E-E-A-T. The grade distribution across this entire dataset:
| Grade | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | 20,769 | 3.6% |
| B (80-89) | 125,680 | 21.5% |
| C (70-79) | 132,472 | 22.7% |
| D (60-69) | 273,884 | 46.9% |
| F (0-59) | 31,542 | 5.4% |
Only 25.1% of all websites pass with an A or B grade. Nearly half — 46.9% — score a D. The web's content quality problem is not a fringe issue; it is the norm.
Key Finding: Trustworthiness Lags Everything Else
Among our 30 high-profile sites, the four E-E-A-T pillars averaged:
| Pillar | Average Score | Role in Final Grade |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | 97.1 | 15% weight |
| Expertise | 93.2 | 25% weight |
| Authoritativeness | 83.5 | 25% weight |
| Trustworthiness | 74.4 | 35% weight |
Experience and Expertise are broadly strong — these are established brands with deep content and recognizable names. But Trustworthiness, which carries the heaviest weight in the score, pulls the overall average down to 84.8 (a B).
The gap between the top pillar (Experience: 97.1) and the bottom (Trustworthiness: 74.4) is 22.7 points. That's the E-E-A-T story in one number: even the world's biggest websites are leaving trust on the table.
Overall Rankings: Every Site, Scored
| Rank | Site | Score | Grade | Exp | Expt | Auth | Trust |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Coursera | 100 | A | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| 1 | Redfin | 100 | A | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| 3 | Forbes | 98 | A | 100 | 100 | 100 | 94 |
| 4 | Stack Overflow | 97 | A | 100 | 100 | 87 | 100 |
| 5 | Zillow | 96 | A | 99 | 100 | 86 | 100 |
| 6 | Harvard | 95 | A | 100 | 100 | 94 | 91 |
| 7 | CDC | 94 | A | 100 | 100 | 99 | 84 |
| 7 | GOV.UK | 94 | A | 99 | 93 | 86 | 98 |
| 9 | Wikipedia | 91 | A | 100 | 98 | 100 | 75 |
| 9 | WebMD | 91 | A | 100 | 100 | 71 | 95 |
| 9 | IMDb | 91 | A | 100 | 100 | 95 | 78 |
| 9 | PayPal | 91 | A | 100 | 93 | 79 | 95 |
| 13 | WHO | 90 | A | 88 | 100 | 99 | 78 |
| 13 | Chase | 90 | A | 100 | 100 | 71 | 91 |
| 15 | Microsoft | 88 | B | 99 | 86 | 79 | 91 |
| 15 | Walmart | 88 | B | 100 | 100 | 86 | 75 |
| 17 | BBC | 87 | B | 88 | 100 | 71 | 88 |
| 18 | GitHub | 86 | B | 96 | 96 | 87 | 75 |
| 18 | Healthline | 86 | B | 100 | 100 | 71 | 81 |
| 18 | IRS | 86 | B | 88 | 100 | 94 | 68 |
| 21 | Bank of America | 83 | B | 100 | 93 | 94 | 61 |
| 22 | Target | 82 | B | 100 | 93 | 79 | 68 |
| 23 | NYTimes | 79 | C | 88 | 93 | 79 | 65 |
| 24 | Airbnb | 72 | C | 100 | 83 | 71 | 53 |
| 25 | Amazon | 65 | D | 94 | 78 | 71 | 38 |
| 25 | Booking.com | 65 | D | 94 | 78 | 71 | 38 |
| 25 | Realtor.com | 65 | D | 94 | 78 | 71 | 38 |
| 25 | 65 | D | 99 | 78 | 71 | 38 | |
| 25 | Spotify | 65 | D | 94 | 78 | 71 | 38 |
| 25 | TripAdvisor | 65 | D | 94 | 78 | 71 | 38 |
The overall grade distribution:
| Grade | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | 14 | 47% |
| B (80-89) | 8 | 27% |
| C (70-79) | 2 | 7% |
| D (60-69) | 6 | 20% |
| F (0-59) | 0 | 0% |
No site scored below 65, which makes sense — these are all established brands with HTTPS, recognizable content, and some level of organizational identity. The D-grade cluster at 65 points is particularly interesting: six sites share that exact score, all dragged down by Trustworthiness scores of just 38.
Scores by Industry
| Sector | Avg Score | Grade | Exp | Expt | Auth | Trust | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Education | 95.3 | A | 100 | 99 | 98 | 89 | 91-100 |
| Government | 91.3 | A | 96 | 98 | 93 | 83 | 86-94 |
| Technology | 90.3 | A | 98 | 94 | 84 | 89 | 86-97 |
| Healthcare | 89.0 | B | 96 | 100 | 80 | 85 | 86-91 |
| News & Media | 88.0 | B | 92 | 98 | 83 | 82 | 79-98 |
| Finance & Banking | 88.0 | B | 100 | 95 | 81 | 82 | 83-91 |
| Real Estate | 87.0 | B | 98 | 93 | 86 | 79 | 65-100 |
| E-commerce | 78.3 | C | 98 | 90 | 79 | 60 | 65-88 |
| Social & Entertainment | 73.7 | C | 98 | 85 | 79 | 51 | 65-91 |
| Travel & Hospitality | 67.3 | D | 96 | 80 | 71 | 43 | 65-72 |
Education Leads, Travel Trails
Education (95.3) dominates. All three sites — Harvard, Coursera, and Wikipedia — earned A grades. Coursera achieved a perfect 100. Academic institutions benefit from natural E-E-A-T signals: credentials on every page, organizational authority, citation culture, and comprehensive privacy and terms documentation.
Government (91.3) follows closely. GOV.UK scored 94, with a near-perfect Trustworthiness of 98 — the highest trust score in the sample. Government sites are built around transparency by design: contact information, terms of use, accessibility statements, and cookie policies are standard.
Travel & Hospitality (67.3) sits at the bottom with a D average. All three sites — Booking.com (65), Airbnb (72), and TripAdvisor (65) — scored in the C-D range. Their Trustworthiness scores averaged just 43, the lowest of any sector by a wide margin. These are transaction-focused platforms where the homepage prioritizes search interfaces over organizational trust signals.
The Four Pillars: Deep Dive
Experience (avg 97.1) — The Easy Win
Experience measures first-person content, author presence, case studies, original media, and testimonials. Nearly every site in our sample performed well here because established brands inherently demonstrate experience through their content depth and history.
Only three sites scored below 95: BBC (88), IRS (88), and WHO (88) — all of which serve primarily informational content without strong first-person narrative patterns.
Experience is the easiest pillar to satisfy because it reflects what a site is more than what it does technically.
Expertise (avg 93.2) — Content Depth Matters
Expertise evaluates credentials, certifications, Person schema, professional memberships, topic depth (word count and structure), and verified profile links.
The top performers all had one thing in common: substantial content. Sites with thin homepages — Amazon (78), Booking.com (78), Realtor.com (78), Reddit (78), Spotify (78), TripAdvisor (78) — clustered at exactly the same Expertise score. Their pages are search-and-filter interfaces, not content-rich documents.
Healthcare sites excelled here, averaging 100 across the board. Healthline, WebMD, and WHO all publish detailed, expert-authored content that naturally hits expertise signals.
Authoritativeness (avg 83.5) — The Schema Gap
Authoritativeness checks for Organization schema, citations to authoritative sources, award mentions, trust badges, and media mentions ("As seen in" / "Featured in").
Key findings: - 80% of sites lacked Organization schema markup - 73% had no citations to authoritative external sources - 80% had no award or recognition mentions - 80% had no trust badges
The highest Authoritativeness scores went to sites with strong brand identity expressed in markup: Coursera (100), Forbes (100), Wikipedia (100), Redfin (100). The lowest went to sites with minimal homepage content or schema: Healthline (71), BBC (71), Chase (71), and the entire Travel cluster at 71.
The gap here is largely about structured data. Adding Organization schema — a straightforward JSON-LD block identifying the business, its logo, social profiles, and founding date — would immediately boost most sites.
Trustworthiness (avg 74.4) — The Universal Weakness
Trustworthiness carries 35% of the final score — the most of any pillar — and it's the weakest across the board. This single pillar determines the difference between an A and a D for most sites.
Here's what we found across all 30 sites:
| Trust Signal | Present | Absent |
|---|---|---|
| HTTPS | 100% | 0% |
| Privacy policy | 73% | 27% |
| Terms of service | 50% | 50% |
| Contact page | 47% | 53% |
| About page | 47% | 53% |
| Social media links | 50% | 50% |
| Cookie policy/consent | 33% | 67% |
| Phone number | 10% | 90% |
| Email address | 3% | 97% |
| Physical address | 0% | 100% |
HTTPS is universal — that battle is won. But beyond that, the drop-off is steep. Half the sites lack terms of service on their homepage. Two-thirds lack cookie consent. Not a single site in our sample displays a physical address, and only one provides an email address.
The six sites that scored Trustworthiness at 38 — Amazon, Booking.com, Realtor.com, Reddit, Spotify, TripAdvisor — all shared the same pattern: HTTPS present, but missing privacy policy, terms, contact page, about page, cookie policy, and all contact details from the homepage.
The Trust Divide
The most striking pattern in our data is the gap between the highest and lowest Trustworthiness scores:
| Site | Trust Score | What They Do Right |
|---|---|---|
| Coursera | 100 | Privacy policy, terms, contact, about, cookie consent, social links |
| Redfin | 100 | Full policy suite, contact details, social links, Organization schema |
| Stack Overflow | 100 | Complete trust infrastructure on homepage |
| Zillow | 100 | All trust signals present |
| GOV.UK | 98 | Nearly complete — cookie consent, terms, about, contact all present |
| ... | ... | ... |
| Amazon | 38 | HTTPS only — minimal trust signals on homepage |
| Booking.com | 38 | HTTPS only — search-focused interface |
| 38 | HTTPS only — app-shell rendering | |
| Spotify | 38 | HTTPS only — minimal server-rendered content |
The difference between a Trust score of 100 and 38 is not about the quality of the organization — it's about whether trust signals are visible on the page. Amazon is one of the world's most trusted companies, but its homepage communicates none of that trust to automated analysis tools. And if a bot can't find it, neither can Google's quality algorithms.
The Most Common E-E-A-T Issues
These are the specific issues flagged most frequently across our sample:
| Issue | Category | Severity | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| No physical address displayed | Trust | Info | 100% |
| No email address visible | Trust | Info | 97% |
| No phone number visible | Trust | Info | 90% |
| No years-of-experience claims | Exp | Info | 90% |
| No professional memberships | Expt | Info | 90% |
| No testimonials or reviews | Exp | Info | 83% |
| No Organization schema | Auth | Warning | 80% |
| No trust badges | Auth | Info | 80% |
| No award mentions | Auth | Info | 80% |
| No certifications mentioned | Expt | Info | 73% |
| No citations to authoritative sources | Auth | Warning | 73% |
| No cookie policy/consent | Trust | Warning | 67% |
| No credentials (MD, PhD, etc.) | Expt | Info | 63% |
| No verified profile links (sameAs) | Expt | Info | 60% |
| No media mentions ("As seen in") | Auth | Info | 57% |
| No contact page link | Trust | Warning | 53% |
| No about page link | Trust | Warning | 53% |
What the Numbers Mean for Google Rankings
Google has been explicit that E-E-A-T is a "page quality" signal evaluated by their quality raters, not a direct ranking algorithm. But the March 2024 core update and subsequent helpful content updates have made it clear that pages aligning with E-E-A-T principles perform better in search.
The pattern in our data maps directly to Google's priorities:
- YMYL content faces the highest bar. Healthcare sites averaged 85 on Trustworthiness vs. 43 for Travel — reflecting the reality that health, finance, and legal content are scrutinized more heavily.
- Structured data signals authority. The 20% of sites with Organization schema scored 14 points higher on Authoritativeness than those without.
- Trust infrastructure is table stakes. Every site scoring 90+ overall had at minimum: privacy policy, about page, and terms of service accessible from the homepage.
Five Actions to Improve Your E-E-A-T Score
Based on what separates the A-grade sites from the D-grade cluster:
1. Add Organization schema. This is the single highest-impact change for 80% of websites. A JSON-LD block identifying your business — name, logo, URL, founding date, social profiles — gives Google and AI systems concrete entity signals. Takes 15 minutes.
2. Make trust signals visible on every page. Link to your privacy policy, terms of service, about page, and contact page from your footer. These are present on every A-grade site in our sample. The six D-grade sites all lacked most of them.
3. Add cookie consent. 67% of sites in our sample lacked visible cookie policy or consent banners. Beyond GDPR compliance, cookie consent signals that a site takes user privacy seriously — a direct Trustworthiness signal.
4. Cite authoritative sources. 73% of sites had no citations to .edu, .gov, or established research domains. Adding external links to authoritative sources boosts both your Authoritativeness pillar and your AEO citation likelihood.
5. Display credentials and author information. If your content is written by qualified people, make that visible. Author bios with credentials (MD, PhD, CPA), "Reviewed by" attributions, and Person schema markup all contribute to the Expertise pillar.
How to Check Your Own E-E-A-T Score
LLMSE offers a free E-E-A-T analysis tool that evaluates any URL against over 50 signals across all four pillars. You'll get an overall score and grade, individual pillar scores, detected positive signals, and specific issues to fix — ranked by impact.
You can also use our comprehensive audit to check E-E-A-T alongside SEO, AEO, readability, accessibility, and brand safety in a single scan.
Methodology
This report analyzed homepage content for each website as of February 24, 2026. E-E-A-T scores were generated using LLMSE's EEAT analyzer (v1.5.19), which evaluates 50+ signals across four pillars with weighted scoring: Trustworthiness (35%), Expertise (25%), Authoritativeness (25%), and Experience (15%).
The global distribution data (584,000+ URLs) comes from LLMSE's classification pipeline, which runs E-E-A-T analysis automatically during URL processing.
Limitations: We analyzed homepages only. Article pages, product pages, and authenticated areas may score differently — particularly on Expertise signals that require substantial content. Some sites (Reddit, Spotify, Booking.com) render primarily via client-side JavaScript; their server-rendered HTML may underrepresent the content visible to users.
This analysis was conducted using LLMSE, which has classified over 1.4 million websites across SEO, EEAT, WCAG accessibility, readability, and GARM brand safety dimensions. All data reflects the database as of February 2026. To analyze your own site, visit llmse.ai/classify.