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The 5 Trust Signals AI Uses to Decide If You're Credible (and How to Pass)

Feb 17, 2026

Full Transcript

Emarketed — Episode 01 Deliverables

5 SEO-Friendly Episode Titles

  1. The 5 Trust Signals AI Uses to Decide If You're Credible (and How to Pass)
  2. Why AI Ignores Your Brand — and the 5 Signals That Fix It
  3. AI Visibility for Founders: The 5 Trust Signals You Can't Afford to Miss
  4. How ChatGPT Decides Who to Recommend: 5 Trust Signals Every Founder Needs
  5. Stop Being Invisible to AI: A Founder's Guide to the 5 Trust Signals That Matter

Episode Description

Most founders are still optimizing for Google — but AI has already moved on. When a potential customer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview for a recommendation, your brand either gets cited or gets skipped. The difference comes down to five specific trust signals that AI systems use to evaluate credibility. In this tactical solo episode, host Alex breaks down each signal — entity consistency, third-party validation, content depth, technical foundation, and AI-readable structure — with practical examples and a quick self-audit checklist you can run in fifteen minutes. No fluff, no theory: just what founders need to do this week to start showing up in AI-generated answers.

Full Episode Transcript

[COLD OPEN — 0:00]

Right now, somewhere, an AI is deciding whether to recommend your brand or your competitor's. And it's not using Google rankings to make that call. It's looking at something completely different — five specific trust signals — and most founders have no idea they even exist. Today I'm going to break down exactly what those signals are, and more importantly, how to make sure you're passing the test.

[INTRO — 0:18]

Welcome to Emarketed, the show where we break down what actually works for getting your brand visible in the age of AI search. I'm Alex, and this is a solo episode today. Just you and me, cutting straight to the tactical stuff. No fluff, no theory — just what you can do this week to start showing up when AI answers questions your customers are asking.

[DEFINING TRUST SIGNALS — 0:42]

So first, let's get clear on what I mean by "trust signals." When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview a question like "what's the best project management tool for remote teams" — the AI doesn't just pull up the top Google result. It evaluates sources through a completely different lens. It's asking: is this source credible? Is this brand real? Can I verify what they're claiming? These are trust signals — the criteria AI systems use to decide whether to cite you, recommend you, or ignore you entirely. And here's the thing: search has fundamentally shifted from finding pages to selecting sources. If you're not a trusted source in the eyes of AI, you're invisible. Period. So let's get into the five signals.

[SIGNAL 1: ENTITY CONSISTENCY — 1:25]

Signal number one is entity consistency. This is the foundation of everything. Before an AI will ever cite you, it needs to understand who you are. And it determines that by looking at how consistently you present yourself across the entire internet. Your brand name, your description, your services, your team — all of it needs to match everywhere. Your website, your LinkedIn, your Twitter, your directory listings, your about pages, your schema markup. If your homepage says you're a "growth marketing agency" but your LinkedIn says "digital strategy consultancy" and your Google Business Profile says something else entirely — the AI gets confused. And when AI gets confused, it doesn't guess. It just moves on to a competitor whose signals are cleaner. Research shows that inconsistent digital information reduces AI output accuracy by thirty to forty percent. So here's the practical takeaway: pick your core brand description — one sentence — and make sure it's literally the same everywhere. Same words, same positioning, same message. Check your website, your socials, your email signatures, your Crunchbase — everywhere.

[SIGNAL 2: THIRD-PARTY VALIDATION — 2:30]

Signal number two is third-party validation. This answers the question AI is always asking: who vouches for you? AI systems heavily weight what other people say about you — not what you say about yourself. Think about it. If you claim you're the best CRM for startups, that's marketing. But if TechCrunch wrote about you, if G2 reviewers consistently praise you, if industry experts cite your research — that's evidence. And AI loves evidence. The key shift here is that it's no longer about the number of backlinks. A few high-quality, contextually relevant mentions from authoritative sources massively outweigh hundreds of low-quality directory links. Because AI interprets quality mentions as proof that others trust your brand. So practically, what should you do? Get mentioned in publications your audience reads. Publish original research that others want to cite. Build case studies with real numbers. Get customer reviews on platforms AI actually scrapes. One strong mention in a respected industry blog is worth more than fifty random link placements.

[SIGNAL 3: CONTENT DEPTH & EXPERTISE — 3:35]

Signal three is content depth and expertise. AI systems are incredibly good at evaluating whether your content actually teaches something or whether it's just keyword-stuffed fluff. They're looking for what Google calls E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. But for AI, it's even more specific. Does your content genuinely explain concepts? Is there clear author attribution? Does the author have demonstrable expertise in this topic? Surface-level blog posts that skim topics don't get cited. Deep, expert-led content that answers questions thoroughly — that does. Here's a concrete example. If someone asks an AI "how do I set up a cold email sequence," a five-hundred-word overview isn't getting cited. But a detailed, step-by-step guide written by someone with a track record in sales — that's the content AI selects. So audit your content. Is it genuinely expert-level? Does it have named authors with real credentials? Are you going deeper than your competitors? If not, that's your gap.

[SIGNAL 4: TECHNICAL FOUNDATION — 4:40]

Signal four is your technical foundation. This one surprises a lot of founders because it feels like a developer concern, not a marketing one. But AI systems absolutely evaluate your site's technical health as a proxy for credibility. Site speed, security certificates, mobile responsiveness, structured schema markup — all of these send signals to AI about whether your organization is legitimate and reliable. Think about it from the AI's perspective. If it's going to recommend your brand to a user, it needs to be confident that the experience will be good. A slow, insecure site with no schema markup doesn't inspire that confidence. Here's what to do. Make sure you have HTTPS everywhere. Get your page speed scores into the green. Implement structured data markup — especially organization schema, FAQ schema, and product schema. These help AI systems parse your information accurately and trust that you are who you say you are. Run a quick audit using PageSpeed Insights and Schema.org's validator. If you're failing basic technical checks, fix those before anything else.

[SIGNAL 5: AI-READABLE STRUCTURE — 5:50]

And signal five is AI-readable structure. This is the newest and most forward-looking signal. There's now a standard called llms.txt, proposed in late 2024, that lets you create a machine-readable summary of your most important content specifically for AI systems. It's a simple markdown file at your website's root that tells AI crawlers: here's who we are, here's our most important content, and here's what we're experts in. Think of it as the AI equivalent of a sitemap, but designed for language models instead of search engine crawlers. Now, adoption is still early. Major AI providers haven't officially mandated it yet. But the brands implementing it now are getting ahead. It's low effort, high potential upside. Beyond llms.txt, make sure your content architecture is clean and logical. Use clear headings, organized navigation, and make key content accessible without JavaScript rendering. The easier you make it for AI to understand and parse your site, the more likely you are to get cited. If you want help generating an llms.txt file, we've actually built a free tool for that at emarketed.com/tools/llms-txt-generator. I'll remind you again at the end.

[SELF-AUDIT CHECKLIST — 6:55]

Okay, let's do a quick self-audit. Five bullets — run through these today.

  1. Search your brand name in ChatGPT and Perplexity right now. What comes back? Is it accurate?
  2. Check your brand description across five platforms — your website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Crunchbase, and Google Business. Are they identical?
  3. Google your brand name plus "review" or "mention." Count how many credible third-party sources are talking about you.
  4. Pick your most important landing page and run it through PageSpeed Insights and Schema.org's validator. How does it score?
  5. Go to your website's root and try accessing yourdomain.com/llms.txt. Does anything come back? If not, you've got a gap.

Run through that checklist, and you'll know exactly where you stand in about fifteen minutes.

[COMMON MISTAKES — 7:30]

Now let's talk about common mistakes. The biggest one I see is founders optimizing for traditional Google SEO and assuming that will carry over to AI visibility. It won't. AI search is a fundamentally different game. Second mistake: focusing on self-promotion instead of third-party evidence. AI doesn't care about your marketing copy. It cares about what other credible sources say about you. Third: ignoring technical basics. I've seen companies spend thousands on content but lose AI visibility because their site takes six seconds to load or has no schema markup. And fourth: treating this as a one-time project. AI trust signals need to be maintained and updated continuously. Your competitors are building their signals right now, so this is not a set-it-and-forget-it situation.

[CTA — 8:10]

If you're wondering where you actually stand with AI visibility right now, we built something for that. Head to emarketed.com and check your AI Visibility Score. It takes about two minutes, and it'll show you exactly how AI engines are perceiving your brand today. And if you want to start implementing signal five right away, grab our free llms.txt generator at emarketed.com/tools/llms-txt-generator. Both links are in the show notes.

[OUTRO — 8:35]

That's it for today. If this was useful, share it with a founder who needs to hear it. I'm Alex, this is Emarketed, and I'll catch you in the next one.

[Outro music]