Google recognizes content creators: A breakthrough for E-E-A-T and SEO

Google is explicitly identifying people it understands to be content creators. 

This article explains how we know that Google is recognizing content creators, why it’s important and what SEO professionals need to do in response.

Google’s growing recognition of content creator entities

I recently discovered Knowledge Panel subtitles like “Content Creator (Medicine)” and “Content Creator (Travel)” in the SERPs.

This shows Google’s explicit identification of individuals as authoritative content creators within specific fields.

This is a significant E-E-A-T development for content creators as it gives visible and meaningful proof that Google has recognized them as credible sources of information on a specific topic.

It’s also a huge advantage in modern SEO, since the person’s content is more likely to appear in today’s search results and tomorrow’s AI-powered assistants.

Here are some examples from the Kalicube Pro dataset (tracking over 17 million person entities) for content creator topics:

• Agriculture, Animals, Art, Automobiles.
• Baking, Baseball, Beauty, Bodybuilding, Boxing.
• Camping, Cats, Coaching, Cooking, Cosmetics, Cricket, Cryptocurrency.
• Dancing, Dogs. 
• Fashion, Fashion, Finances, Fishing, Food.
• Gambling, Games, Geography, Gymnastics. 
• Health, Hiking, History, Humor.
• Interior design, Investing, Jazz, Law. 
• Magic, Markets, Martial arts, Medicine, Mental health, Music. 
• Nutrition, Painting, Parenting, Physical fitness, Politics, Psychology. 
• Racing, Real Estate, Religion.
• Science, Shopping, Skincare, Soccer, Stand-up comedy, Surfing.
• Technology, Toys, Travel, Vegetarianism, Video games, Volleyball.
• Weather, Weight loss, Wildlife, Wrestling.

Google is looking for content creators

This focus on identifying content creators is a recurring theme at Google. 

Three events in 2023 and 2024 demonstrated that identifying content creators is a major focus for Google:

• The Killer Whale Knowledge Graph update in July 2023.
• The March 2024 E-E-A-T update. 
• The Google leak in May 2024 confirmed that Google explicitly associates people with their profile pages (isReference) and articles they have written (isAuthor). 

Our Knowledge Graph monitoring tool shows small updates every 1 to 2 weeks. In 2024, they have mostly affected person entities.

While these updates may seem random and impact around 10% of entities, they are typically minor “recalibrations” rather than strategically significant changes. 

The key takeaway is that Google is increasingly focused on identifying trustworthy person entities and connecting them to the content they create.

Why this is important to E-E-A-T in SEO

E-E-A-T takes on real (measurable) meaning when Google identifies people it considers authoritative on a topic and can confidently link them to the content they create.

This places us firmly in the era of what I call modern SEO, where, in addition to optimizing the content (traditional SEO), optimizing the content creator and website publisher entities is necessary.

The logic is simple and irrefutable, given the data and the Google leak.

In order for Google’s algorithms to apply any E-E-A-T credibility signals, they need to understand the entity and the relationship between that entity and the web pages it creates or that provide information about it.

This is a zero-sum game. Without explicit understanding, the entity’s E-E-A-T credibility signals (links, awards, qualifications, reviews, testimonials, media coverage, etc.) will have no effect.

How to optimize content creator/author for SEO

To achieve optimal SEO results, you need to focus on optimizing both the content creator and website publisher entities. However, if you have to prioritize one, choose the content creator.

Google is increasingly focusing on individuals and optimizing content creators will likely provide the most value to your clients right now.

Optimization passes through three phases:

• Understandability.
• Credibility.
• Deliverability.

Understandability

Create clear relationships between the content creator and reference pages that Google can use to verify facts about the person. Ideal reference pages include:

• The creator’s personal website.
• The “About” page on their employer’s website.
• Social profiles.
• Trusted third-party sources like Crunchbase, Wikidata, etc.

Credibility

Establish connections between the content creator and relevant content. This includes:

• Articles they’ve written.
• Videos they’ve produced.
• Podcasts where they’ve appeared as a guest.
• Interviews they’ve participated in.
• Articles written about them.

Deliverability

Expand the content creator’s digital footprint by creating new content, getting content published about them and controlling all information strands. Ensure all content is:

• Clear.
• Consistent.
• Relevant.
• Topical.
• Factually accurate.

Use the creator’s personal website as a central hub in a hub-and-spoke model, linking all content to help Google and other AI systems connect the dots.

A simple, DIY method to check if Google recognizes the author

To see if Google recognizes an author, search for the title of one of their articles. In the SERPs, click the three vertical dots next to the result.

If Google shows the author’s name and a brief description, it means the relationship between the author and the content has been established in Google’s algorithms.

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.

Business email address

See terms.

---

The person entity and URL relationships evolve over time

This strategy is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach. Over time, a person’s digital footprint expands, their niche evolves and Google’s dataset and algorithms continuously change.

For example, during the Killer Whale update, the number of person entities tripled in a single day, drastically altering the landscape for most entities overnight. 

Even smaller updates can accumulate into significant changes:

• Seven minor updates In August and September led to the deletion of 19.21% of person entities and the creation of 21.26% new ones.

There is a constant risk of losing critical elements such as entity-to-reference relationships, author connections, specific facts about the entity and relationships with other entities. 

The daily risk of losing their Knowledge Panel is particularly high for less established person entities.

Tracking these elements is essential, and ongoing maintenance is crucial.

We consider an entity to be established only after two years of presence in Google’s Knowledge Graph, as reflected in its entity home.

Entities that depend on sources like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Google Books, Crunchbase or other third-party resources for their existence in the Knowledge Graph remain vulnerable to changes in those sources.

How to plan a website to maximize SEO success

Many redesigned websites fail to improve SEO, often damaging existing rankings and creating challenges for SEO teams trying to recover lost traffic. This can severely affect business visibility, lead generation and sales.

I have been handed many a brand new website and asked to “SEO it” when untold damage has been done and significant time and effort must be spent just to get traffic levels back where they were before the redesign. 

Many articles help with website SEO and how to retain SEO traffic during a redesign. There are also helpful books and frameworks for website planning.

Yet, seemingly no resource combines a sensible approach to planning a new site with the retention and improvement of SEO. 

This article will outline how to plan a new website effectively to retain existing traffic and create a platform to improve your SEO. 

To make following along easier, you can fill out the steps in the template below:

• Website planning to maximize SEO [Template]

Website planning and SEO 

To ensure your new website retains and improves your SEO, it is helpful to ensure you have a clearly defined SEO strategy and you have articulated this in a simple SEO plan. 

The worst thing in any website design project is when unexpected problems or changes arrive during development. 

A well-developed plan that has input from all stakeholders helps ensure less of this. More importantly, if the customer changes their mind or the scope creeps (the scope always creeps), you have the document to show the original scope and justify the necessary fee increases. 

I wish I had a dollar for every time we were asked to review a new site that was almost finished – only to find that SEO hadn’t been considered, putting its success at risk.

We recently worked on a six-figure project for a business that thrived on organic traffic. The project would essentially destroy all the hard-earned SEO. 

This took several months and probably another six figures in PPC spend (to replace what was free SEO traffic from an SEO vs. PPC perspective), as well as further SEO time and redevelopment. You want to avoid that if at all possible. 

We have also seen other sites that had so comprehensively damaged SEO traffic that the only sensible approach was to roll back to the previous site. 

Suffice it to say that ensuring you retain SEO traffic and set the scene for improvements is not something you can leave to chance. 

The approach laid out here combines a fairly standard approach to website planning, which, done well, will save much time, money and pain, with the kind of jobs needed to retain existing SEO traffic while building a furtive platform for further SEO development. 

The output of this process should be a document that either acts as the foundation of the website brief or is integrated into a traditional brief. 

Note: Where the SEO brief and website brief are separate entities, I always recommend reviewing the final website brief to ensure the SEO brief has been incorporated before the project kicks off. 

There are five key steps to work through to create your SEO-friendly website blueprint:

1. Existing rankings and traffic 

Your must understand your traffic and where it comes from.

To do this, spend some time in Google Analytics and Google Search Console to identify:

• High-ranking keywords.
• High-traffic keywords.
• High-traffic content.
• High-opportunity pages.
• High-opportunity keywords.

Your goal is to clearly document what works currently. These must be included in the new site.

If high-traffic content is removed, not correctly optimized, or lost in the new site’s hierarchy, then you are inviting problems.