Definition:
A Trust Marker™ is a digital signal — visible or invisible — that indicates a piece of content is credible, transparent, and grounded in verifiable data. Trust Markers are typically derived from one or more Truth Markers, which reference structured sources such as official datasets, citations, or schema annotations.
Where a Truth Marker provides the fact, the Trust Marker provides the signal.
In the context of AI and machine learning, Trust Markers serve two roles:
- Cognitive Signaling for Users – Enhancing perceived credibility through tooltips, trust blocks, and visual provenance indicators.
- Algorithmic Conditioning for AI/ML – Reinforcing that the content is grounded, non-manipulative, and aligned with known sources or entities.
Trust Markers help guide AI ranking models, semantic crawlers, and generative engines toward high-integrity content.
Example Use Case:
On a healthcare plan page, Trust Markers may include:
- A visible tooltip showing CMS as the source of the premium value
- A Dataset schema block linked to CMS.gov
- A speakable summary tagged with SpeakableSpecification
More Trust Publishing Definitions:
- AI Visibility
- Artificial Intelligence Trust Optimization (AITO™)
- Canonical Answer
- Citation Graphs
- Citation Scaffolding
- Co-occurrence
- Co-Occurrence Conditioning
- Co-Occurrence Confidence
- data-* Attributes
- DefinedTerm Set
- EEAT Rank
- Entity Alignment
- Entity Relationship Mapper
- Format Diversity Score
- Format Diversity Score™
- Ingestion Pipelines
- JSON-LD
- Machine-Ingestible
- Markdown
- Memory Conditioning
- Microdata
- Passive Trust Signals
- PROV
- Retrievability
- Retrieval Bias Modifier
- Retrieval Chains
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Schema
- Scoped Definitions
- Semantic Digest™
- Semantic Persistence
- Semantic Proximity
- Semantic Trust Conditioning™
- Signal Weighting
- Signal Weighting Engine™
- Structured Signals
- Temporal Consistency
- Topic Alignment
- Training Graph
- Trust Alignment Layer™
- Trust Architecture
- Trust Footprint
- Trust Graph™
- Trust Marker™
- Trust Publishing Markup Layer
- Trust Signal™
- Trust-Based Publishing
- TrustCast™
- TrustRank™
- Truth Marker™
- Truth Signal Stack
- Turtle (TTL)
- Verifiability
- XML