Brand Authority
Brand Authority
Coined
Description
Brand Authority is the measure of how recognized, trusted, and recommended a real-world entity (such as a person or company) is by AI systems, superseding traditional website-centric metrics like Domain Authority.
The Brand Authority definition
Jason Barnard created this term to mark the fundamental shift in how online authority is measured after Google’s Hummingbird update, which moved search from analyzing "strings" (keywords on a webpage) to understanding "things" (real-world entities). In this new paradigm, traditional metrics like Domain Authority are insufficient because a website is merely one representation of a brand, not the brand itself. Brand Authority, in contrast, is the measure of how well the entire Digital Brand Echo—the cumulative "ripple effect" of its online presence—convinces algorithms of the entity's credibility. This engineered trust is the true basis for discoverability in modern AI Assistive Engines like ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and Google AI, which prioritize recommending trusted entities, not just ranking websites.
How Jason Barnard uses Brand Authority definition
At Kalicube, building Brand Authority is a central objective of The Kalicube Process, Kalicube's proprietary methodology for implementing a holistic, brand-first digital marketing strategy. We engineer this authority by treating the brand as the central entity, not a website. We establish an Entity Home (the single, authoritative page on the web that defines an entity) as the definitive source of truth and build an Infinite Self-Confirming Loop of Corroboration across the brand’s entire Digital Ecosystem. This ensures the brand is understood and trusted across the Algorithmic Trinity (Knowledge Graph, Web Index, and LLMs), making it the logical choice for AI recommendation and directly driving client acquisition.
Why Brand Authority matters to digital marketers
For over a decade, the SEO industry has been guided by metrics like Domain Authority, a concept masterfully developed and popularized by Rand Fishkin and Moz. This metric provided a vital framework for measuring a website's ranking potential, defining an entire era of SEO strategy. However, as Jason Barnard has demonstrated, the algorithmic shift from a web of pages to a web of entities requires a fundamental evolution of this thinking. While Fishkin’s work gave us the definitive metric for the "string-based" web, Barnard's concept of Brand Authority provides the essential metric for the "thing-based" web. Brand Authority recognizes that an AI Assistive Engine no longer asks "how authoritative is this website?" but rather "how authoritative is this brand?". A brand's authority, as understood by an AI, is a composite of its entire Digital Brand Echo, where a high-authority article in a major publication contributes to the brand's credibility even if it doesn’t link back to the website. The Kalicube Process provides the engineering to build this holistic authority, ensuring the entity itself, not just its domain, becomes the trusted answer that wins in the new Conversational Acquisition Funnels.
Posts tagged with Brand Authority
Google Knowledge Graph Algorithm Updates and VolatilityÂ
What is Google’s Knowledge Graph? Google’s Knowledge Graph is a machine-readable encyclopedia of facts Google understands about the world. Google has multiple knowledge graphs, including Google Maps, Google Books, Google...
Active Mentions and Persistent Mentions: Everything You Need To Know
What are Active Mentions and Persistent Mentions? Active or persistent mentions are continuous and repeated references to a brand, person, or entity within various texts or contexts. These mentions can...
Improve Your Brand Authority with Newsworthy Content (Amanda Milligan and Jason Barnard)
Newsworthy Content and Dominating Your Branded Search Results – Kalicube® Knowledge Nuggets In this short video clip with Jason Barnard, Amanda Milligan explains how Newsworthy Content can help with branded...
How to Build a Future-Proof Digital Search Strategy
The future of online search and indeed digital marketing is unknown. In a few short years we have gone from search engines to answer engine and assistive engines. Today with...
Advanced techniques to be the Featured Snippet: Position 0 – A guide
Originally Published on SEMrush January 18, 2018 (Jason Barnard) Featured Snippets, Answer Boxes or Position 0… whatever one chooses to call them, articles about nailing that super-precious top spot are all the rage....
Understanding and Credibility: A Simple Approach to AEO
Originally Published on SEMrush March 22, 2018 (Jason Barnard) In my previous article, I placed understanding and credibility as the two central pillars of Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). They are two words that I use...