High: when the page achieves its purpose well

What the document says

High pages serve a beneficial purpose and achieve it well. The structure of the evaluation shifts in a subtle, important way: while in Low one defect is enough to sink a page, in High one merit is enough to lift it — the page must demonstrate at least one of three attributes:

1. MC created with a high level of effort, originality, talent or skill. The document says to have high standards and offers the chapter’s most useful calibration rule: on any topic, the “typical” or “average” page is Medium — High is above the average of what exists online on that subject. The comparison table is instructive: an article with accuracy, depth and clarity vs. content mixed with filler; original photos and video vs. third-party imagery; a plumbing how-to by a skilled plumber vs. by someone who can’t explain the steps.
2. Positive reputation of the site (when it created the MC) or of the creator (on platforms and forums). For non-YMYL topics the bar is informal: popularity, engagement and reviews count. And the usual caveat: small sites with no reputation at all can still be High.
3. High E-E-A-T. Experience counts for almost everything — a forum post about appliances written by someone who owns the product can be High. Expertise ranges from hobbies to tax preparation, including informal expertise visible in the content itself. Authority exists at every scale: the government site for tax forms, but also the local business as the go-to source of information about itself.

The examples span the full spectrum of purposes: an award-winning newspaper, the US Naval Observatory Master Clock, a humor site known for its satire, the “about us” page of a fish & chips restaurant, a backpack store with reviews, a humorous video by two engineers about cats — where experience with cats, not formal credentials, sustains the E-E-A-T.

In practice

“Typical = Medium” is the most objective content-planning rule the document offers. Before producing anything, open the top five results for the target SERP. What they all share is the Medium baseline — reproducing it is a tie. High begins at what none of them have: the proprietary data, the real test, the missing depth, the angle of someone who lived the problem.

The disjunctive criterion is the small-site strategy. You don’t need all three attributes — you need one, unambiguous. No brand reputation? Compensate with visibly high-effort MC or documented first-hand experience. That asymmetry is what makes competing with portals possible: they have reputation; you can have originality and experience they can’t scale.

The fish & chips example is the definitive argument for well-made local SEO. A neighborhood restaurant is the maximum authority on itself — hours, menu, history. A complete, accurate, original institutional page isn’t bureaucracy: it’s high E-E-A-T by the document’s literal criterion.

Original photos and video are a scoring attribute, not decoration. “Original visual content produced by the site or creator” appears as a marker of high originality — and stock imagery as a marker of low. In a world of AI-generated content, original media is among the hardest effort signals to fake and the easiest to verify.