In the past few years, Google has encouraged websites to work on ways to showcase their E-A-T: Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. There are a lot of ways to do this, and one option might be to add “trust seals” to your site — things like logos from the BBB. But do they help with E-A-T in Google’s eyes?
The question was posed to Google’s John Mueller and he responded with:
“I don’t know. I would actually focus on what actually provides, kind of authenticity to users, where users feel trust about a website that they are looking at. Taking random seals and copying and pasting them on a website, I don’t think that would really impress users and definitely won’t impress Googlebot.”
He followed up with “obviously if there are specific qualifications that you have, I think it makes sense to highlight that on a page“, and I tend to agree. If your audience would be impressed by a particular qualification or award, by all means showcase it.
If you are a true industry expert at something, it’s likely worth the effort and space to showcase that on your site. However, simple trust seals like one from the BBB are unlikely to impress Google or anyone that visits your site.
In some cases, those actual reduce trust for me. Too many of those seals are “earned” by purchasing the approval as a product.