incentivized, or self- manufactured. There is a big difference between a mention of a Forbes contributor and a Forbes staff reporter. Google knows how to ignore the former, and most likely they can recognize the latter as a vote for your brand authority. In fact, we believe this is one of the reasons Google made changes to reel unfollow. It's possible that now, if Google encounters a great link on an authoritative site, we think it can count it in your EAT even if it isn't followed. To add to the rel="unfollow" discussion… I too think "unfollow" is just a hint for Google these days. Just as a link with a “unfollow” on it can work to your advantage, as in his example, it can also work against you. Take this scenario: someone on your site reads an informational article. In this article is a link with company employee list branded anchor text pointing to another company's website. This link is a paid placement. The average reader would not be able to distinguish a "unfollow" link from a normal link. Therefore, this link can be automatically trusted by your website users. If Google identifies that link as irrelevant or misleading (especially when we're talking about YMYL topics), Google may ignore the "nfollow" and still count that link on your site. (For more on this, see an article I wrote about manual penalties and guest posts.)Ultimately, expertise and authority are closely related and interconnected concepts, much like EAT's “T” pillar, trust. Reliability Like authority, trustworthiness is assessed at several levels: The reliability of