💡 TL;DR: Generative AI is rewriting how people discover products and brands. Visibility now depends on how credible, experienced, and trustworthy your content appears to AI systems and not just search engines. Combining E-E-A-T with GEO helps your company become the answer in AI search, not just another result.
Search as we know it is being rewritten. Instead of ten blue links (do your own research), users now get direct answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews or Perplexity. And that changes everything and especially user behaviour. People no longer accept a list of links; they expect a ready-made answer and then discuss or refine it afterwards.
If your company isn’t seen, cited, or recommended by these AI systems, you’re effectively invisible, no matter how good your Google ranking used to be. This is where GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) meets E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Together, they form the new foundation for visibility in AI search.
What E-E-A-T Actually Means
Google first introduced E-A-T to help its systems evaluate content quality. But as AI search began shaping how information is interpreted, Google added a fourth pillar "Experience" highlighting the growing importance of lived, first-hand insights.
Let’s break it down:
- Experience: First-hand insights and lived knowledge. Your content should prove that you have real, hands-on expertise in the field you’re writing about.
- Expertise: Deep understanding of the topic. Show that you truly know your domain, through depth, data, and clarity. In GEO, AI systems prioritise content that reflects real understanding, not surface-level summaries.
- Authoritativeness: Recognition from others as a trusted source. Build signals that others rely on your work, that can be citations, mentions or backlinks. The more you’re referenced, the more likely AI systems are to include your voice in their answers.
- Trustworthiness: Accuracy, transparency, and integrity. Make it easy to verify who you are and how you work. Clear authorship, consistent facts, and honest communication build the kind of trust AI (and people) reward.
While Google insists E-E-A-T isn’t a direct ranking factor, it acts as a powerful proxy for credibility. And credibility is exactly what large language models (LLMs) and generative systems are designed to prioritise.
Why GEO Amplifies E-E-A-T
GEO is the art and science of helping generative AI engines discover, understand, and use your content when formulating answers. In other words: not just ranking for queries, but being referenced as part of the answer.
When ChatGPT or Google AI Overview decides what to include, it doesn’t just look for keywords, it looks for signals of reliability, and those signals map directly to E-E-A-T:
- Experience: Has the author or brand actually done this?
- Expertise: Are they qualified to talk about it?
- Authoritativeness: Do others refer to them or cite their content?
- Trustworthiness: Is the content factual, consistent, and transparent?
How to Build Each Pillar for AI Visibility
1. Experience: Show, Don’t Tell
LLMs are trained to favour content that sounds first-hand and grounded in real practice.
That means:
- Write case studies (“We ran this campaign and here’s what worked.”)
- Share customer stories and lessons learned.
- Use active language that signals involvement: “We tested…”, “We found…”, “In our work with…”
In a GEO context, this matters because AI models are more likely to reproduce phrasing that reflects real-world experience. Generic blog content doesn’t get cited, but authentic insights do.
Ansehn helps you identify which first-hand insights and case studies get surfaced in AI results, powered by our Server Logs feature that tracks how AI systems interact with your content.
📚 Learn more:
Check out our detailed guide on how to monitor AI search engine activity through your server logs.
2. Expertise: Make It Visible
Expertise isn’t just about knowing something, it’s about signalling that knowledge to machines.
- Add author bios with credentials and experience.
- Use structured data (Author, Organization, Article schema).
- Link to authoritative sources and let others link back.
- Keep content up to date and technically sound.
LLMs use these cues to identify reliable voices. Without them, your content looks like just another opinion. With Ansehn, you can measure whether your expertise is actually reflected in AI search results and optimise where it isn’t.
3. Authoritativeness: Build Your Reputation Graph
Generative engines read the web like a reputation map. The more you’re mentioned, quoted, or linked to, the more “authority weight” your domain carries.
To strengthen it:
- Get featured in external publications or thought-leadership pieces.
- Earn backlinks from credible sources.
- Partner with industry peers for co-authored content.
- Make your brand the one others mention when explaining the topic.
The takeaway: citations create citations. The stronger your authority footprint, the more likely you are to be referenced in AI answers. With Ansehn, you can easily analyse this authority through the Citation Analytics feature, which is prompt-specific, data-driven, and instantly actionable.
4. Trustworthiness: Be Verifiable
AI models look for signals of trust the same way users do:
- HTTPS, clear contact info, and transparent authorship.
- Factually correct and verifiable statements.
- Publication dates and revision history.
- Disclaimers where appropriate.
Generative systems are more likely to reuse information from sources that are consistent, stable, and human-backed, instead of anonymous or overly promotional sites. Ansehn helps you track how accurately AI systems describe your brand, revealing inconsistencies, outdated data, or missing trust signals.
Why This Matters Now
Generative AI is changing how people discover products, brands, and expertise.
Where Google’s front page used to be the gateway to your business, today the AI answer is.
According to McKinsey, over 50 % of consumers already use AI-powered search, and by 2028, up to $750 billion in U.S. consumer spending will flow through these new discovery channels. If your brand isn’t visible there, your audience may never even reach your website.
That’s why combining E-E-A-T with GEO is the next big shift in organic marketing:
- SEO made you searchable.
- GEO makes you findable in AI.
- E-E-A-T makes you credible enough to be cited.
The companies that understand this early will dominate the next wave of organic discovery.
Conclusion: Be the Answer
The future of visibility isn’t just about keyword density or backlinks — it’s about credibility, experience, and trust that AI can recognise.
Brands that embed E-E-A-T into their GEO strategy won’t just rank, they’ll own the conversation inside AI systems. When ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews recommend your company first, it’s not just awareness, it’s a new customer touchpoint that drives real revenue.
The shift is already happening, and the brands that adapt now will capture the next wave of organic growth and sales. If you want to know whether your company is already being cited and how to improve your visibility (and sales potential) in AI search, feel free to book a demo.