EEAT has shaped SEO strategy for years. Google’s framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) gave marketers a clear set of steps to optimise, and it worked for some time. Rank well on Google, get found by customers. It sounds simple enough.
But search behaviour has shifted significantly. Customers now discover brands through ChatGPT, TikTok, Google Maps, and AI Overviews, often without typing a query into a traditional search bar. According to Growth Memo, the average traditional search query is four words long. The average AI query is 23. That’s a stark contrast from how internet users used to navigate Google back in 1998.
EEAT was built for one channel – Search. Yet the current customer journey now spans many, and the FACTS framework was designed to close the gap. FACTS (Freshness, Authority, Consistency, Trust, Semantic Relevance) was developed by SOCi to fill in the blanks that EEAT left – visibility across AI assistants, social platforms, and reputation systems, not just Google search rankings.
Why EEAT is strong enough on its own
This isn’t to say it’s no longer a valuable framework. Google still uses EEAT to assess content quality, and this remains useful information. The problem is scope. EEAT focuses almost entirely on how Google evaluates your content, and says very little about how ChatGPT decides whether to recommend your business, how reviews influence AI-generated answers, or why a brand with strong Google rankings is still invisible on Perplexity or Claude.
Research shows that whilst 98% of brand locations have claimed Google profiles, only 53% actively manage their Facebook store pages. This inconsistency shouldn’t be ignored. LLM citations for local brands are only around 79% accurate, meaning that poor platform consistency can cause inaccurate AI-generated mentions, and inaccurate mentions mean lost customers.
FACTS in simple terms
FACTS stands for Freshness, Authority, Consistency, Trust, and Semantic Relevance. Each pillar focuses on a specific part of brand visibility, across search engines, social platforms, AI assistants, and reputation systems.
Freshness: How recently are you publishing and updating?
AI platforms have a strong recency bias. According to an Ahrefs study, the average URL cited by AI platforms is 25.7% newer than those cited in traditional search. More than 70% of AI-cited pages were updated within the past 12 months, and 76.4% of ChatGPT’s top-cited pages were updated within the past 30 days.
Freshness applies to more than your website. Regularly posting to your Google Business Profile, updating local landing pages, and maintaining active social accounts all send recency signals that AI platforms reward.
Authority: Can you prove your expertise, not just claim it?
Authority in FACTS is similar to Google’s definition with EEAT – it reflects how a brand demonstrates leadership in its industry. Professional certifications, industry awards, coverage in credible publications, and years of trading history all contribute.
The AI stakes are high. Brands that publish authoritative content and earn recommendations from trusted online sources are 40% more likely to appear in AI-generated answers than those missing either factor, according to AirOps research.
Consistency: Does your brand data match across every platform?
Consistency has always been key in SEO, but AI has taken things a step further. AI platforms need to ground their answers in trusted, verifiable sources. When your business name, address, phone number, or hours differ across Google, Bing, and Facebook, it creates a ‘data conflict’ that can cause AI systems to suppress or misrepresent your brand.
Google Maps, business websites and Facebook (in that order) are the sources most frequently cited for local queries on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Trust: What do third-party signals say about you?
Trust in FACTS refers to external signals like ratings and reviews. These reflect consumer approval which AI platforms actively use when deciding which brands to recommend.
Businesses recommended by ChatGPT tend to average 4.4 stars, compared with 4.2 stars on Google – AI platforms are picking from a more selective, higher-quality pool. Research also shows that 92% of consumers consult online reviews when choosing a local business, making reputation management important for trust and conversions.
Semantic relevance: Does your content answer the questions your customers are asking?
Does your brand, across its entire digital presence, answer every question an ideal customer might have before choosing you over a competitor?
Consumers are now asking longer, more nuanced questions rather than single keywords or phrases. Brands that optimise for individual keywords but fail to address the full context of customer intent will increasingly be excluded from AI-generated answers. Semantic relevance means building content around problems, not just products addressing the ‘trigger event’ that pushes a customer to search in the first place.
How FACTS outperforms EEAT
The key difference between the two is that EEAT evaluates content quality through Google’s lens, whilst FACTS evaluates brand visibility across the entire discovery ecosystem. That includes search engines, social platforms, AI assistants and reputation systems.
This matters most for brands managing multiple locations. FACTS provides a structured filter for prioritising marketing investments. Before committing to any new tactic or content update, teams can ask if it improves freshness, builds authority, strengthens consistency, trust, or semantic relevance? If the answer is no across all five, it moves down the priority list.
Applying FACTS in practice
The shift towards AI-driven discovery is well underway. Inclusion in AI recommendations for a local brand is much more difficult than inclusion in Google’s local 3-Pack. Brands that wait to adapt will experience the gap widening.
Start by auditing your current presence against the framework:
- Are your listings consistent across Google, Directories, and Facebook?
- Are you being cited anywhere with high domain authority or providing thought leadership?
- When did you last update your local landing pages?
- Are you actively generating and responding to reviews?
- Does your content address the full range of questions your customers ask not just the keywords you’re targeting?
EEAT shaped a generation of SEO strategy, but it’s changed. FACTS is the framework for where search is heading and for brands that want to be found wherever their customers are looking.
If you want help redefining your SEO strategy, WorkPR are here to help. Get in touch today and see how we can support you in increasing your brands visibility.
