New research: this is what makes AI engines trust your company

What the study measured

NP Digital scored seven trust signals from 1 to 5 across six AI platforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. The scores are based on how often a signal led to citations and visibility in AI answers, drawn from interviews with 100 marketers. Published in June 2026.

In other words, this is not a theory about what AI engines ought to reward. It is a measurement of what actually made a difference, across the platforms your customers already use.

The winner: coverage from independent third parties

Third-party citations score between 4.5 and 4.8 out of 5 on all six platforms, with an average above 4.6. No other signal comes close to delivering that consistently.

Third-party citations means other credible sources writing about your company: trade media, professional publications, directories, partner sites and the press. AI engines read the entire web and look for consensus. When several independent sources point to you as a serious player, the model dares to name you in its answer.

Neil Patel sums it up like this in the report: if you are going to invest in one thing to build citation authority across every platform at once, get more third-party coverage. Everything else varies from platform to platform. This does not.

Number two: named experts

Content signed by a named expert scores 4.0 to 4.6 across the platforms. Anonymous “by the editorial team” articles get cited less often than the exact same content with a real name behind it.

This is low-hanging fruit for most Norwegian companies. Put a name, a title and a couple of lines about the author’s expertise on your expert articles. If you have a managing director or subject lead who genuinely knows the field, that is the person who should be credited as the author, not the logo.

Where the platforms diverge: links, schema and forums

The other four signals in the study behave completely differently depending on the platform:

Three things are worth pausing on:

Backlinks are not dead, but they have a smaller job now. Google AI Overviews is built on Google’s own index, so links still carry real weight there (3.9). ChatGPT retrieves and evaluates sources differently, and there your link profile is a weak predictor (1.9). If you have spent big money on link building, it still works in Google. It just moves very little in ChatGPT.

Schema markup is a Google tool, not an AI citation tool. The 1.4 on ChatGPT is the lowest score in the entire study. Schema still helps Google understand and display your content, and it is cheap to get right once. But it is not where the battle for AI citations is fought.

Perplexity loves forums. Community engagement scores 4.0 on Perplexity against 1.5 on Claude. If your customers use Perplexity, Reddit threads and professional forums suddenly become a visibility channel, not just a place where people complain.

What should a Norwegian B2B company do now?

The priorities sort themselves out once the numbers are on the table:

1. Get coverage from credible third parties. Customer cases with your suppliers, interviews in trade media, member profiles from your industry association, podcast appearances, guest articles. A handful of genuine mentions from sources AI engines trust move more than yet another article on your own blog.

2. Put names on your expert content. A named author with verifiable expertise, on everything meant to build authority.

3. Split your effort according to the platforms your customers use. If they search in Google, links and schema still count. If they ask ChatGPT, coverage and brand mentions are close to everything. If they use Perplexity, count forums and community in.

4. Measure it. Without measurement you have no idea whether the effort works. Bing Citation Share now gives you a real number for your AI visibility, and tools like Searchable show who is taking the citations on your topics.

This matches what we see in practice

When we wrote our guide to AI visibility in Norway, the main point was that consensus across independent sources moves citations more than any single technical fix. NP Digital’s numbers underline exactly that.

At the same time, it is worth being honest about the nuances. We will still set up schema for our clients, because it helps in Google and costs little. But the order is clear: coverage first, technical work after. And our experience from Norwegian niches is that the bar is lower here than in large English-speaking markets. There are few good Norwegian-language sources on most B2B topics, so the company that actually gets covered by three or four independent places can become the one AI engines lean on.

Wondering where your company stands today? We would be happy to run a no-obligation AI visibility baseline, so you can see in black and white who gets cited on your topics, and who does not.

Frequently asked questions

What is a trust signal in AI search?

A trust signal is something the AI engine uses to judge whether a source is credible enough to be cited in an answer. Examples include third-party coverage, named expert authors, backlinks, brand mentions, structured data and activity in forums.

Are backlinks a waste of time now?

No, but the value depends on the platform. Backlinks score 3.9 out of 5 as a trust signal in Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, but only 1.9 in ChatGPT. If ChatGPT matters most to your customers, link building gives limited returns there.

Should we drop schema markup?

No. Schema scores low as an AI citation signal (1.4 to 3.0), but it still helps Google understand and display your content. Get it right once, and spend the rest of your time getting coverage from third parties.

How does a small Norwegian company get third-party coverage?

Start where the relationships already exist: customer cases with suppliers and partners, interviews in trade media and local newspapers, coverage from your industry association, podcast appearances and guest articles in professional publications. A few genuine mentions from credible sources are worth more than many weak ones.

How do I measure my AI visibility?

Bing Citation Share in Bing Webmaster Tools shows what share of the AI citations on a topic you own. Tools like Searchable monitor how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews talk about your brand over time. You can also test manually by asking the AI engines the questions your customers ask.