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SearchDock

Last updated: July 2026

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E-E-A-T for SEO and AEO

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — quality signals Google's raters evaluate and AI models increasingly mirror when choosing sources to cite for YMYL and commercial queries.

Why both dashboards matter

The 12% problem

Only about 12% of the URLs ChatGPT cites rank in Google's top 10. Ranking and being cited are two different games. Most teams pay for two tools to play both. SearchDock is one.

SearchDock tracks Google rankings from Search Console and AI citations from multi-pass prompt sampling in one nav — Websites, Pages, Keywords, Competitors, GSC, and Crawl alongside your AEO Score.

CHATGPT-CITED URLS BY GOOGLE RANK
Rank 1–10 in Google12%
Rank 11+ or not ranking88%

Source: independent analyses of ChatGPT citation overlap with Google top-10 results (2025–2026). SearchDock measures both channels so you see the full picture.

What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T is Google's framework for assessing content quality, especially for health, finance, and safety topics. The extra "E" (Experience) was added in 2022 for first-hand expertise.

AI engines favor sources with clear author credentials, citations to primary research, and consistent entity identity.

How does E-E-A-T affect AEO?

Pages with visible author bios, dateModified, outbound citations to primary sources, and Organization schema score higher on SearchDock extractability and trust dimensions.

Thin affiliate pages without expertise rarely earn AI citations on commercial prompts.

How do you improve E-E-A-T?

Add named authors with credentials, cite primary sources inline, keep content updated, collect verifiable reviews on G2, and implement Article and Author schema.

Regulated industries should use SearchDock approval workflows for publish governance.

Frequently asked questions

Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?
Google says E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor but guides quality assessment. Practically, it correlates with rankings and AI citations.
Does AI check author credentials?
Models weight pages with clear expertise signals higher in retrieval and citation. Implement visible author blocks.
How does SearchDock score trust?
AEO Score includes entity clarity and freshness. Content at Scale flags missing author and citation elements.

Measure rankings and AI citations together