Google’s Mueller Asked About Increasing E-A-T with Structured Data via @martinibuster

There is an SEO idea that an author page or displaying author information is useful for ranking well.

It’s beyond dispute that E-A-T in content is important. However, Mueller’s answer emphasized doing what is good for users.

John Mueller’s answer did not confirm that author bio is a ranking signal. Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness are so much more than a self-authored author biography.

This is the question:

“To increase the E-A-T of a medical page, should I use article schema or for example web page or medical web page as the latter has the option for reviewed by property?

Or Google can find that the article was reviewed from the context if I provide such details (and schema property reviewed by is not necessary)?”

The question assumes that Schema.org structured data can increase the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of a web page. Structured Data does not confer any such thing. Telling Google you are expert is not the same as being expert.

Structured data is simply a way to communicate information. It doesn’t communicate signals of quality.

Mueller answered that using structured data was up to the publisher and that authorship information was gathered by Google “through a number of ways.”

This is what Mueller answered:

“That’s kind of up to you.

We do try to recognize these additional details about information about the author, information about the reviewers, about the website overall through a number of ways.

…partially through the content directly. So kind of similar to how users would see it if they go to the page and they see… information about who has reviewed this content or who has provided it… that’s really useful.”