Somewhere along the way, SEO teams started treating E-E-A-T like a checklist. Add an author bio, mention a few credentials, display a trust badge, and hope Google rewards the effort.

Except Google doesn’t assign pages a simple E-E-A-T score.

Search Engine Land’s Ryan Jones argues that marketers have become too focused on the visible signs of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, while overlooking the substance behind them.

Here’s what deserves more attention:

• Understand what E-E-A-T represents. It comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. It’s a framework for evaluating content quality, not a direct ranking score you can optimize.
• Create something worth citing. Original research, firsthand experience, and useful data give other websites a reason to reference your content.
• Look beyond author bios. Credentials can help readers understand who’s responsible for a page, but adding a biography doesn’t automatically improve rankings.
• Avoid recycled information. If your article repeats everything already ranking, ask what new perspective, evidence, or insight you can contribute.
• Earn authority over time. Relevant links, genuine endorsements, and recognition within your industry carry more substance than decorative credibility signals.
• Focus on satisfying the search. Make content clear, accurate, and useful enough to answer the question that brought someone there.

The article also explores how links, information retrieval, and user behavior can relate to search rankings, although the exact workings of Google’s systems aren’t fully public.

E-E-A-T is still a useful way to think about content quality. Just don’t confuse displaying expertise with actually demonstrating it.

Head to Search Engine Land for more.

Your happiest customers might be your best marketing team. Are you putting their words to work?

Testimonial.to makes it easy to collect video and text testimonials through a simple link, without asking customers to create an account. You can also import existing reviews and social media mentions.

The best part? Its customizable “Wall of Love” lets you showcase all that customer praise directly on your website. Because sometimes your customers can make a more convincing sales pitch than you can.

Let’s take this party outside of the inbox, Carnies!

Connect and network with over 20,000 marketers to get (and give) advice, feedback, support, and LOLs.

• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
• 👍 Join The Daily Carnage Facebook Group

😎 See ya there.

The Daily Carnage reaches decision-makers at brands, agencies, SaaS companies, and startups who are actively researching solutions, evaluating vendors, and making purchasing decisions every day.

Now, we’re opening up a limited number of Friends of The Daily Carnage partnerships for brands that want to build a consistent presence with our audience, not just run a one-off ad.

Friends get discounted sponsorship inventory, priority booking, first access to unsold placements, bonus opportunities, and performance reviews throughout the year.

Partnership levels include dedicated newsletter features, premium placements, podcast pre-rolls, classified ads, social promotion, and more.

Past sponsors include Canva, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Marketing Brew, and dozens of other leading brands.

Interested in reaching marketers who actually click? Reach out to get started!

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, here’s what we’re covering:

🔒 Apple’s secret blocklist: How Safari’s restrictions work and which ad tech companies have been affected.

📉 The impact on advertisers and publishers: Why disruptions to ad delivery and audience signals could affect campaign performance, publisher revenue, and programmatic advertising.

📊 The measurement problem: Why winning an ad auction doesn’t always mean an ad actually appeared on a user’s screen.

⚖️ Privacy vs. platform power: What happens when the company controlling the browser also operates an advertising business?

🛠️ What marketers should do next: Audit your ad tech dependencies, verify campaign delivery, strengthen your first-party data strategy, and ask vendors about their contingency plans.

Apple’s approach raises a bigger question for the open web: How do we protect user privacy while maintaining the infrastructure that supports digital advertising?

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• AI Is Killing Entry-Level Marketing Jobs (12:55)
• Microdramas Are Taking Over Marketing (10:43)
• AI CEOs Want to Slow Down. The AI Race Won’t. (11:39)
• Reddit Is Changing SEO & AI Search (10:55)
• The Creator Economy Rules Gaming (43:53)
• Dark Patterns Are Becoming a Legal Problem for Meta (12:06)
• Dissecting the Brand Apology (11:35)
• Google Image Search is… Pinterest? (9:26)
• Sony & The Death of Physical Media (8:57)

🎙️ Now streaming on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

Ron DeSantis just had a very literal meltdown.

Climate advocacy nonprofit 350Action teamed up with Uncommon Creative Studio to create a life-sized statue of Florida’s governor made entirely of gallium, a metal that melts at just 85.6°F.

Unveiled in Tallahassee, the statue slowly melted into a puddle as temperatures climbed, leaving behind a rather creepy skeleton just in time for Halloween.

The installation was designed to challenge DeSantis’ climate policies, turning rising temperatures into a very public demonstration. No special effects needed. Florida’s weather handled the whole thing.

Sears, 1973