Constructing an About page that survives a rater's reputation check

Constructing an About page that survives a rater's reputation check

The question: when a quality rater lands on your About page mid-investigation, what specific elements convert it from a marketing artifact into trust evidence?

The QRG instructs raters to find out "who is responsible for the website" and to look for information about the site's reputation. Build the page to answer those questions before they're asked.

The construction order:
— State the responsible entity plainly: legal name, not just a brand. For a company, the registered name; for a solo site, the real person.
— Provide a physical or contact pathway. The QRG explicitly notes that a satisfying amount of contact information is part of trustworthiness, especially for transactional and YMYL sites.
— Describe the site's purpose and editorial process — how content is produced and checked. Vague mission statements add nothing; a stated review process does.
— Link to the people: named team members with their own profile pages and verifiable credentials.
— Surface third-party corroboration: press coverage, awards from recognized bodies, professional memberships. Self-praise carries no weight; external attestation does.

Caveat: an About page is a claim, and the QRG is explicit that reputation is established by what independent sources say, not by what the site says about itself. The page makes your claims legible and easy to corroborate; it cannot substitute for the corroboration.

What we still don't know: the degree to which a strong About page influences algorithmic ranking versus only human ratings — the rater data trains systems indirectly, and the transmission function is opaque.