NEEATT — Standalone Document

Version: v1.0 — May 2026 Date: 2026-05-15 Authors: Jason Barnard (Notability + integration); Jarno van Driel (Transparency) Coined: 2024 Licence: CC BY 4.0

What This Document Is

NEEATT extends Google's E-E-A-T credibility framework by adding two factors that AI engines weight heavily but that Google has not made explicit: Notability and Transparency. The combined framework is Notability, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, Transparency.

Coined by Jason Barnard in 2024 with Transparency credited to Jarno van Driel, NEEATT names the full set of factors that AI engines actually use when evaluating whether a brand entity deserves to be recommended. E-E-A-T captures the middle four; NEEATT adds the bookends that make the middle four actionable.

This document is the canonical reference for the framework — what each factor means, why the extension matters, and how to apply it within Assistive Agent Optimization.

The Six Factors

Notability

Is the entity known to the algorithmic ecosystem?

Notability is the most under-discussed factor in AI brand visibility. It asks whether the brand entity has enough recognition — in its specific niche, in its specific geography, with its specific audience — to warrant being treated as a credible source at all.

Notability is hyper-granular. It is not generalised fame. A consulting firm with deep recognition within its industry has high Notability for that industry; the same firm has zero Notability for unrelated categories. A local business has high Notability within its geography; the same business has zero Notability nationally.

AI engines use Notability to filter candidates before evaluating the other five factors. Without Notability, the entity is unknown to the system; the other five factors have no entity to evaluate.

Experience

Has the entity actually done what it claims expertise in?

Experience is direct, demonstrated, lived practice in the field. Authoring content from research is one thing; authoring content from practical experience is another. AI engines weight experiential signals heavily — biographical evidence, documented case studies, demonstrated outcomes, hands-on credentials.

Experience cannot be synthesised. Brands without experience cannot fake it; brands with experience must document it to make it visible.

Expertise

Does the entity have demonstrable knowledge in the field?

Expertise is knowledge-based. Credentials, qualifications, peer recognition, publications, recognised thought leadership. Where Experience is about doing, Expertise is about knowing.

Expertise without Experience is theoretical. Experience without Expertise is unstructured. AI engines look for both.

Authoritativeness

Is the entity recognised by other authoritative sources?

Authoritativeness is conferred, not claimed. The brand cannot declare itself authoritative; other authoritative sources must do so. Citations, references, endorsements, third-party coverage on respected outlets, peer acknowledgement.

Authoritativeness cascades. A small number of high-authority endorsements outweigh many low-authority mentions. AI engines weight the source of recognition heavily — being cited by a recognised authority in the field is the cleanest possible signal.

Trustworthiness

Is the entity reliable, honest, and verifiable?

Trustworthiness combines historical track record with current verification. Has the brand operated ethically? Are claims independently verifiable? Are there public disputes or contradictions? Does the brand's information align across sources?

Trustworthiness is the failure mode most brands underestimate. A brand can have high Expertise, demonstrable Experience, and recognised Authoritativeness but lose at Trustworthiness through inconsistent information across surfaces, unresolved disputes, or claims that don't survive verification.

Transparency

Is the entity's identity and accountability verifiable?

Transparency is the factor Jarno van Driel surfaced as missing from E-E-A-T. Most brands have transparency holes that AI engines detect: ambiguous ownership, hidden authors, vague About pages, opaque corporate structures, content with no clear human responsibility.

Transparency is structural. Clear About pages identifying the brand's people. Author bylines with biographical context. Verifiable contact information. Public corporate registration. Demonstrable physical presence where claimed. The information AI engines need to confirm that a real entity stands behind the content.

Transparency works as a multiplier: without it, all other NEEATT factors operate at reduced strength because the engine cannot verify what it cannot identify.

Why E-E-A-T Alone Is Insufficient

Google's E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) emerged from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines as the rubric human evaluators apply when judging content. The framework is sound for the four factors it covers. It is incomplete because it omits two factors that AI engines provably weight.

The Notability gap

E-E-A-T assumes the entity is known. The framework gives evaluators tools to assess a known entity's credentials but doesn't address what happens when the entity isn't recognised in the first place.

In AI engine practice, unknown entities don't fail at E-E-A-T — they don't reach E-E-A-T evaluation. AI engines filter candidates by Notability first, and entities below the Notability threshold are simply not considered as sources. Adding Notability to the framework names this filter explicitly.

The Transparency gap

E-E-A-T addresses Trustworthiness but treats it as a content-level property. NEEATT separates Transparency as a structural property of the entity itself — is the brand's identity, accountability, and structure verifiable?

This matters because AI engines apply Transparency as a multiplier on every other factor. A brand with strong Expertise and Authoritativeness but opaque ownership operates at a fraction of its potential weight. AI engines downgrade entities they cannot fully identify, even when other signals are strong.

How NEEATT Operates in Assistive Agent Optimization

NEEATT sits within the Credibility layer of the UCD Funnel — the middle layer that determines whether AI engines trust the brand enough to recommend it.

Understandability (Does AI know who the brand is?) sits underneath NEEATT. Without Understandability, NEEATT signals have no entity to attach to.

NEEATT applies at Credibility (Does AI trust the brand enough to recommend it?). The six factors are the credibility signals AI engines weight when deciding whether to surface the brand.

Deliverability (Does AI advocate for the brand unprompted?) sits above NEEATT. Deliverability requires the NEEATT-loaded entity node to be activated through distribution and codification.

Build direction: Understandability → NEEATT (Credibility) → Deliverability. Skip Understandability and NEEATT signals fail to anchor. Skip NEEATT and Deliverability never engages.

How to Apply NEEATT

Six steps, one per factor, applied to a specific brand.

Step 1 — Establish Notability

Identify the brand's niche, geography, and audience precisely. Identify the publications, databases, communities, and registries that confer Notability within that specific scope. Build presence systematically: industry registries (Crunchbase, sector-specific databases), trade publications (niche outlets that the audience trusts), professional associations (memberships, board positions, speaking engagements).

The goal is hyper-niche Notability — being well-known to the specific audience that matters, not generally famous.

Step 2 — Document Experience

Catalogue what the brand has actually done. Case studies, project documentation, dated work history, lived experience in the field. Make the experiential evidence machine-readable through schema markup, structured biographical pages, dated timelines.

Step 3 — Demonstrate Expertise

Catalogue qualifications, credentials, publications, recognised thought leadership. Surface them on author pages, About pages, biographical contexts. Build topical authority through depth, breadth, and originality of published work.

Step 4 — Cultivate Authoritativeness

Earn citations from other authoritative sources in the field. Industry publications, peer-reviewed work, journalist coverage, recognised authority endorsements. Authoritativeness cannot be self-declared — it must be conferred by independent sources the algorithm already trusts.

Step 5 — Build Trustworthiness

Maintain consistency of information across all surfaces. Resolve disputes publicly. Make claims that survive verification. Demonstrate the historical track record. Inconsistency is the failure mode that costs Trustworthiness — same information, same wording, same dates everywhere.

Step 6 — Engineer Transparency

Build clear About pages identifying the brand's people. Add author bylines with biographical context. Surface verifiable contact information. Make corporate structure public. Demonstrate physical presence where claimed. Eliminate ambiguity about who is behind the content.

NEEATT in the Containment Hierarchy

NEEATT operates inside the broader discipline of training AI to recommend brands. The hierarchy:

Assistive Agent Optimization (2025) — the umbrella discipline. NEEATT is the Credibility-layer factor framework.

Assistive Agent Optimization contains AI Assistive Engine Optimization (2024) — the practice focused on AI engines.

AI Assistive Engine Optimization contains Answer Engine Optimization (2017) — the practice focused on answer engines.

Answer Engine Optimization contains Search Engine Optimization — classical search engine optimization.

NEEATT applies across all four. Search Engine Optimization that ignores NEEATT optimises for ranking without building credibility. The full discipline applies NEEATT as the credibility-signal framework that AI engines actually weight.

The [Kalicube](https://kalicube.com/entity/kalicube/) Framework and The Kalicube Process both cover the full Assistive Agent Optimization discipline. NEEATT is the credibility factor framework they use.

Source Attribution

NEEATT was articulated by Jason Barnard in 2024 as an extension of Google's E-E-A-T framework. Notability and Transparency are the two factors Jason added; Transparency was contributed by Jarno van Driel through dialogue with Jason. The combined NEEATT framing — and its integration into The Kalicube Framework and Assistive Agent Optimization — is Jason Barnard's contribution.

The first public articulation of NEEATT was Jason Barnard's Search Engine Land article in March 2024:

Barnard, J. (2024, March 19). The two parts of E-E-A-T Google hasn't told you about. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/google-neeatt-438497

The article credits Jarno van Driel explicitly for the Transparency contribution.

Related concepts in the same body of work:

Academic References

NEEATT is referenced or analysed in:

• Barnard, J. (TKP 2026). The Kalicube Process: Geometric Framework v4. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18735074
• Barnard, J. (TKP 2026a). Annotation as the Confidence Fulcrum. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18723460
• Barnard, J. (TKP 2026c). Computational Trust: Reframing Entity Authority as Annotation Efficiency. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18735062
• Barnard, J. (2026). Index-Time Context Envelope. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20095004

Where to Engage

• Apply The Kalicube Process at https://kalicube.pro/methodologies/the-kalicube-process — the methodology that operationalises NEEATT credibility-building on a specific brand.
• Read The Kalicube Framework at https://kalicube.pro/methodologies/the-kalicube-framework — the theoretical model in which NEEATT sits.
• Read about Assistive Agent Optimization at https://kalicube.pro/methodologies/assistive-agent-optimization — the umbrella discipline that uses NEEATT as its credibility framework.
• Read about the UCD Funnel at https://kalicube.pro/methodologies/the-ucd-funnel — the diagnostic framework whose Credibility layer NEEATT populates.

Cite As

Barnard, J. (2024). NEEATT: Notability, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, Transparency. Kalicube. Available at https://kalicube.pro/methodologies/neeatt

Original public articulation: Barnard, J. (2024, March 19). The two parts of E-E-A-T Google hasn't told you about. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/google-neeatt-438497

End of document.