<b>Can the algorithm tell first-hand experience from rewritten research?</b>

<b>Can the algorithm tell first-hand experience from rewritten research?</b>

The extra "E" in E-E-A-T is experience. But can rankings actually distinguish a hands-on review from a competent desk summary?

— I assembled 35 review-intent SERPs and coded top pages for concrete experience markers: original photos, custom measurements, specific personal anecdotes, unique test data.
— Top-3 pages carried 2-3x more such markers than pages ranked 7-10.
— The strongest single discriminator was original imagery that couldn't be stock or manufacturer-supplied.

The nuance: I can't prove the algorithm "reads" experience directly. A simpler explanation: experience markers correlate with effort and dwell-time, which correlate with rank. Either way, the observable pattern is that desk-rewrite reviews increasingly underperform on experiential queries. Original artifacts are the cheapest hard-to-fake signal.

Caveat: my experience-marker coding is judgment-heavy and could be biased by knowing the rank.

Method note: blinded-where-possible manual coding, 35 review SERPs, top-10 each.

Confidence: low-to-medium