Framework

E-E-A-T for AI Search: Google's Trust Framework, Reapplied

Google's search quality guidelines describe E-E-A-T, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, as the qualities that make content worth ranking highly. The same four qualities are useful for thinking about AI citation, but the way a business demonstrates each one shifts when the reader deciding whether to trust it is a retrieval and re-ranking system instead of a person scrolling a results page.

E — Experience

For Google, experience meant showing evidence of having actually used a product or performed a service, not just described it abstractly. For AI citation, experience shows up as specificity: concrete details a generic competitor couldn't easily copy. "We install roofs" is generic. "We've replaced 40+ roofs damaged by hail in this specific county, and we know which insurance adjusters ask for which documentation" is a passage that signals real, first-hand experience, and it's also a much stronger, more distinctive chunk for a retrieval system to match against a specific question.

E — Expertise

Expertise is demonstrated knowledge of a subject, not just a claim of it. In AI search terms, this means content that answers the actual hard, specific questions a customer or a competitor would ask, not just the easy, generic ones. A page that only says "we're experts" contains no expertise signal a retrieval system can actually use. A page that correctly and specifically answers "what's the difference between architectural and 3-tab shingles for a steep-slope roof" demonstrates it.

A — Authoritativeness

This is the one that shifts most under a citation economy. Authoritativeness used to be measurable partly through backlinks. In AI search, it's measured more through independent corroboration: reviews, directory listings, press mentions, and other sites treating a business as a legitimate reference point. A business can't declare its own authoritativeness into existence; it has to be recognized by others, which is why off-site work matters as much as on-site work.

T — Trust

Trust is the most direct one: accurate, verifiable, consistent information. Contradictions between what a business's website says and what's stated elsewhere, pricing, hours, service area, undermine trust for a retrieval system the same way they'd undermine trust for a person cross-checking two sources. Basic accuracy and consistency across every place a business is mentioned is a trust signal that costs nothing but attention to maintain.