Author, date, and first-hand experience signals

The Who / How / Why framework is Google's polite phrasing for what the SEO industry calls E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness). The polite phrasing matters because the assessment is qualitative. Google's systems do not check a single tag and pass or fail. They look for a constellation of signals that say: a real person with a verifiable identity wrote this, you can tell when, and the content reflects experience that could not be assembled by a generative model from common knowledge.

There are three concrete signals our AI Overview Checker inspects:

1. Author signal. Visible byline, <meta name="author">, or an author field in Article/BlogPosting schema. Any of these passes the check. All three is better.
2. Date signal. A visible "Published" or "Updated" date, a <time datetime="..."> element, an article:published_time Open Graph meta, or a datePublished/dateModified field in schema.
3. First-hand markers. Use of "we", "our", "I", "my", and phrases like "in our test", "we built", "we measured", "our findings". The heuristic is crude, but the presence of first-person markers correlates strongly with content the model could not have generated from common knowledge.

The third one is the trickiest. The first two are mechanical. The third is editorial.

Google's own example contrast:

• ❌ Commodity: "7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers" - based on common knowledge, could come from anyone
• ✅ Non-commodity: "Why We Waived the Inspection & Saved Money: A Look Inside the Sewer Line" - unique expert or experienced take

The non-commodity version uses first-person, contains specifics, and could not be generated without lived experience. That is the bar.

Make the author signal explicit

The minimum:

<p class="byline">By <a href="/authors/herman-schutte">Herman Schutte</a></p>

The better version, with schema:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "Why we waived the inspection",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Herman Schutte",
    "url": "https://example.com/authors/herman-schutte",
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/herman-schutte",
      "https://twitter.com/hermanschutte"
    ]
  }
}
</script>

sameAs is the underrated field. It links the author entity to their other public profiles, which is how Google starts to confirm that "Herman Schutte" is a single real person across the web.

Make the date signal explicit

The minimum:

<p>Updated <time datetime="2026-05-18">May 18, 2026</time></p>

The schema version:

{
  "datePublished": "2026-05-12",
  "dateModified": "2026-05-18"
}

A subtle rule: do not fake dateModified to be more recent. Google's policy explicitly calls out changing dates without meaningfully updating the content as a violation. Update the date when you have actually changed the page.

Make first-hand experience visible

This is the editorial part. A page that demonstrates first-hand experience usually contains at least one of:

• Numbers from your own data. "We A/B tested this with 4,200 visitors over six weeks."
• Screenshots of your own work. Not stock images, not AI-generated illustrations. Real screenshots from a real flow.
• Decisions you made and why. "We chose to skip the inspection because..." not "Many homeowners choose to skip the inspection."
• Specific people, places, dates. "On March 12, our customer Acme Corp tried this and..."
• What did not work. Failures are the strongest signal that the content reflects real experience.

If a page does not contain any of those, it likely reads as commodity content to Google's models, regardless of how well it is written.

• Fake author bios with AI-generated headshots. These fail the E-E-A-T scrutiny that Google's quality systems apply, and the brand damage when discovered is severe.
• <meta name="author" content="Admin">. Worse than nothing; signals laziness.
• Updating dateModified to spoof freshness. Explicit policy violation.
• Listing the same author on every page of a site that obviously has multiple contributors. Breaks the trust signal it was meant to build.
• Anonymous blog with no author info. Almost guarantees commodity scoring on any topic where authorship matters (which is most of them).