Google's September helpful content update finished rolling out today, two weeks after it began. SEO professionals are reviewing traffic charts and debating which sites lost ground.
One detail deserves particular attention. Google changed a few words in its guidance: where it previously referred to helpful content "written by people," it now refers to helpful content created for people. This is an implicit acknowledgement that a large share of the web is now produced by machines, and that Google does not intend to police who or what wrote the text. Instead, it will look for signs that the author knew the subject.
This change aligns with a decision Google made last December, which received little attention at the time.
What is E-E-A-T, and what is it not?
In December, Google updated its search quality rater guidelines and added one letter. E-A-T, for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, became E-E-A-T, with the new E standing for Experience. ChatGPT had been released two weeks earlier and dominated public attention, so the change went largely unnoticed outside SEO circles.
A clarification is necessary, as this concept is frequently misunderstood. E-E-A-T is not a ranking score, and no E-E-A-T figure appears in Search Console.
It originates in the guidelines Google provides to its human quality raters, who review search results and assess their quality. Their ratings do not directly affect any site; they help Google verify whether its systems are rewarding the right type of pages. E-E-A-T is therefore essentially a description of what Google aims to reward.
In the Search Central post announcing the change, Google illustrated the new E with examples: someone who has actually used a product, actually visited a place or actually lived through an experience. It also placed trust at the centre of the framework, with the other three elements contributing to it.
In February, Google also stated clearly that it does not consider whether content was produced with AI, only whether it is helpful and created for people. Taken together, the message for small businesses is straightforward: Google seeks evidence that a real person with real experience stands behind the page.
Why is first-hand experience a small business's greatest SEO asset today?
Because AI can write about diving, but it has never been diving.
It can produce a perfectly adequate article on "the best time to see manta rays in Bali," having processed everything written on the subject. What it cannot describe is how the current behaves at a particular site during a spring tide, or which mornings boat traffic makes a site unpleasant. That knowledge comes only from time in the water.
The same applies to cottage country in Quebec. An AI can write "10 things to do around the lake." It cannot say which trail floods in April, where the best pull-off for the view is located, or how long the drive actually takes on a snowy February morning. A local business owner knows this instinctively.
This year, such knowledge became a competitive advantage almost overnight, because generic content now costs nothing. Anyone can produce a thousand words on any topic in thirty seconds. What remains scarce is knowledge that cannot be fabricated.
How can a business demonstrate experience on its website?
Show that you have done the work
Write as you would explain the subject to a customer at the counter: specifically, without excessive polish, and with the details only someone who has done the work would know. "We tried three suppliers before we found wood that burns clean." "The first winter, the pipes froze in the north corner, so now we insulate there first." Sentences of this kind are worth more than a paragraph of refined generalities.
Consider a dive centre's sustainability page. Nearly all of them state "we care about the environment." Ceningan Divers can state that it built a 68,000-litre rainwater reservoir in 2018. Only the second statement could have been written by that specific business.
Use your own photos and data
Stock photos are the visual equivalent of AI-generated filler: widely recognized, even when viewers cannot explain why.
Original photos, even imperfect ones, prove that a business exists: the real dining room, the real team, the real view from the real deck. The same applies to figures. A business's own data, such as the number of seasons it has operated or the typical duration of a job, is more convincing than a statistic copied from elsewhere, and more difficult to dispute. For a site lacking good images, commissioning them is one of the most worthwhile investments available. Professional photo and video work generates a clear return in this context.
Name the author and describe their background
A page without an author appears to come from no one. We recommend attributing each page to a named person, with a brief line explaining who that person is and why they know the subject: twenty years as a mechanic, grew up on this lake, has run the inn since 2009, or whatever applies.
This is why our articles are signed and state the source of the experience behind them. The practice is not decorative: it indicates where the perspectives originate, allowing readers to evaluate them accordingly.
How is the role of E-E-A-T likely to evolve?
E-E-A-T is already becoming an industry in its own right, with checklists and "E-E-A-T optimization" packages. Some of these offers have little substance: experience cannot be added with a plugin.
The underlying principle, however, is likely to prove more durable than most SEO advice circulating this year. As AI content becomes cheaper and more common, we expect the pages that retain their value to be those backed by a real person, real photos and real specifics. If Google places AI answers at the top of search results, as it is currently testing in the United States, this will apply even more strongly. A summary cannot reproduce a business's own first-hand knowledge.
As a starting point, we recommend selecting the three most-visited pages on your site and adding to each one element that only your business could know: a photo you took, a figure from your own season, or a sentence about what went wrong the first time.