Entity Confidence Score Explained | James Dooley Interviews Paul Truscott, Peter Jones & Kasra Dash

James Dooley: Entity Confidence Score, the 125-point checklist that DefineYourEntity.com has created. Today I'm joined with the co-founders of Define Your Entity, Paul David Truscott, Peter Victor Jones, Kasra Dash, and James Dooley, obviously being myself, has been one of the co-founders. So, Kasra, I'm going to start with yourself. What is the Entity Confidence Score?

Kasra Dash: So the Entity Confidence Score is how confident Google is about the thing that you're talking about. Whether it's a person, whether it is an item, a location, or in our cases, it's usually probably somebody's name, maybe a founder of a company or a company. Um, so for example, if you search eBay, they have a Knowledge Panel. If you were to search, um, James Dooley or Kasra Dash, for example, we've both got Knowledge Panels.

James Dooley: So Peter, on to yourself. The 125-point checklist that we've been debating on for a long time between the four of us. We've been going through everything of what's important, which ranking signals deliver the most weight when it comes down to the Clarity, Consistency, and Confidence Framework of what we've set up. For anyone who's listening to this who want to know more information about that framework, check out the link in the description. And we've got a whole episode talking about the Clarity, Consistency, and Confidence Framework. But Peter, can you start to give some information away, some of the ranking signals of this 125-point checklist that we have to increase that Entity Confidence Score?

Peter Victor Jones: Point is obviously, um, your own website, making sure everything's correct on your own website. We have the single source of truth where we bring together all the brand data or all the data about the person into a single place. And then, um, starting with the most authoritative sites on the web. So your main... Your biggest social media channels, any, um, YouTube channel, etc. Can spread that information out across those channels consistently. Um, and keep looking for more places to, to mention your brand. Um, get mentioned in the press. Um, and make sure that when you are mentioned in the press that the, the statements they're making about the brand are correct and in line with your, um, with your single source of truth for the business.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And then with regards to... I mean, I already have a Google Knowledge Panel. So when someone searched my name for James Dooley, my Google Knowledge Panel already showed up. There's other James Dooleys and I felt I had a strong Google Knowledge Panel until I spoke to Paul. Now Paul, obviously, out this 125-point checklist, you, you clearly made out when we ran it against my KGM ID, I was lacking in 32 of the signals. And one of the signals that I found I didn't really understand the importance of this was to do with popularity, of people wanting to know me, the James Dooley of me. With popularity, can you expand a little bit about the popularity signals that's needed and how they, how they form part of the 125-point checklist to increase the Entity Confidence Score?

Paul David Truscott: Yeah, 100%. Now, we've long suspected that popularity was a factor with Google. Um, but in 2024, they confirmed this through the API data leak. So, all of our, um, thoughts and suspicions were proved correct. So, basically, popularity is about the searcher. Okay. So this, this... And it's measured by Google, um, through their, their Chrome, um, browsers and through people's Google accounts and such like. So they can measure what people are actually searching for. They can see the search pathways. Uh, and by doing that they can see how entities connect together because they can see how people search things together and they can see how popular those things are. So they're looking all the time at, um, both links, for example, how people link to you from, say, social profiles and their own websites, and then their search patterns. Who are they looking for? So it's one thing to prove to Google that you are who you say you are, that you... That everything is consistent. Uh, but then you've got to look at popularity. So this is testimonials, it's reviews, it's traffic. A lot of people forget traffic, right? Actual searches, people online looking for you. So part of what we do is we work to create an environment where we attract traffic to the, um, online assets, branded traffic. So when we say branded, branded can mean a person too. If the, if it's a personal brand, if it's, if it's an individual's Knowledge Panel that we're trying to get, we'll need to attract traffic for that person because it really comes down to with Google, okay, I, I know all of these things appear to be true, but why should I care? Like, if no one's searching for it, who cares? Like, there's nobody to satisfy at the end of the day because you've got to always remember Google is about trying to satisfy the user. Well, if there is no user of that information, then who's there to satisfy? Nobody. So, it just becomes a Knowledge Graph entry and that's for Google's own use so that they understand, okay, we know all the facts about this thing, but there's no point in showing a Knowledge Panel for it because no one's interested in you or the brand, right? So, we got to create that interest. That's a key thing.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And I think this is where, um, I'm moving on to Kasra. So Kasra Dash has got his own Google Knowledge Panel. So you go and search his name and, and it pops and he's got a nice fancy Google Knowledge Panel. It was only when we started to go through the Entity Confidence Score, the 125-point checklist, that myself and Kasra was schooled at times in being, wow, like, we are both lacking in specific areas. So a good example of where the traffic comes into play is, okay, it's easy for James Dooley to say I've wrote eight books, that I've run eight podcast series. But if someone's not looking at James Dooley books or James Dooley podcasts, why would that pop into my Knowledge Panel? It's only when these start to be searched, you can start to get the accordion tabs start to pop in because people are looking for James Dooley as the entity, with books as being the attribute that can come alongside it. And that's where popularity comes. But Kasra, with regards to an entity passport, which you've got and that I've got, and we're obviously looking to strengthen the Entity Confidence Score, people listening to this is going to be, Kasra, give me some knowledge bombs. Give me a few of these signals out of this 125-point checklist. Peter Victor Jones has spoke about the entity home and the brand SSOT. So, it's defining who you are. What signals, like, is there any social media platforms or what other third-party corroborative sources is needed within this 125-point checklist that you can give away? I'm not asking you to name all 125. I just want you to name a dozen kind of platforms that you think is good where in the bio, again, you can repeat that confidence and clarity with who you are and what you do.

Kasra Dash: I think the, the biggest thing for me, and SEOs that are watching this would have probably maybe experienced this in the past, was when you purchase links and you might not actually be doing any form of brand building. So I almost call it as, like, profile backlinks, um, in the sense that I'm trying to get backlinks to rank for my name. Um, the context on those links is very important as well. So, like, what it's actually saying about you. Um, is it talking about you in a positive manner? Does it actually align with the brand SSOT? Um, so I, I think that's probably number one. And then, like what you were saying before, like social media links as well. Um, being active on socials helps as well.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. For me, um, anyone that's an entrepreneur or a business owner, if you can write a book, if you can go and get yourself being put into a good... Having a Goodreads profile, an Amazon Author profile, having a Google Books profile, and then go and get all the social media accounts and in the bios repeating who you are and what you do. LinkedIn's very, very powerful. A YouTube channel is very powerful. An IMDb profile is very powerful. These are all places that you can start to build up. There's no... There's no cost involved in building up a lot of these and then being able to echo, like Kasra said, on more third-party corroborative sources who you are, what you do, and why you're brilliant. And building up the testimonials, the reviews, the awards offline as well builds that Entity Confidence Score. But there is a 125-point checklist. If you want to know how far behind you are compared to competition, if you already have a KGM ID and you want to power that KGM ID up, if you don't yet have a Google Knowledge Panel and you want one, I would recommend going over to DefineYourEntity.com. Fill in the contact form, give all the information of who you are and what you do, and then we can then start to give you some sort of growth roadmap of what you needed to either create or strengthen, or potentially even merge multiple KGM IDs of what you have about the brand as a company or you as being a personal entity, a personal brand. The amount of people that have gone to town to try to build up this checklist and they've done it wrong in, in having multiple KGM IDs and causing cannibalisation for their own name is scary. Go and reach out to DefineYourEntity.com and find out where you are along that 125-point checklist. Peter, Paul, and Kasra, thank you very much.