E-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. A concept from Google's rater guidelines, and not a score, a dial or a thing you can raise.
Contested term · no agreed definition
What it means
It describes qualities human quality raters are asked to look for. It is not a metric Google publishes, not a number in any system, and not something an agency can move directly.
Why it matters for an HVAC company
Because it is sold as though it were a setting. You cannot buy E-E-A-T. You can publish the licence number, name the technicians, state the years, and document real jobs, and those are the assets the concept describes.
What would settle it
You cannot measure it. You can inventory the assets: is there a named author with a bio, a verifiable licence, a physical address, real completed work with dates and equipment, and a way to complain. Count what exists and what does not.
A worked example
A contractor of 31 years holds a state licence with a public verification record, three manufacturer certifications and eight named technicians. None of it appears anywhere on the site. The gap is not a score to raise, it is nine pages that do not exist yet.
The limit on that
Any agency quoting you an E-E-A-T score has invented a number. Ask what it is computed from.