The SOURCE framework
Six letters, one formula. Four of them multiply together, one divides everything, and one is how you read the score. Each chapter from 6 to 11 takes one letter, and each letter has a skill.
The good stuff multiplies, so a zero anywhere in the top line drags the whole result towards zero. Structure is friction, not fuel: a broken foundation divides everything else down. Evaluation sits outside the formula; it is the instrument you read the result with.
The six letters
Chapter 6
Structure
Structure gets you understood. The technical foundation. Can crawlers and AI reach, read and lift your pages? Indexability, clean answers and schema.
Chapter 7
Offsite
Offsite gets you recognised. How the world outside your domain talks about you. Mentions, digital PR and reviews across the sources AI reads.
Chapter 8
Uniqueness
Uniqueness gets you selected. The reason the AI quotes you and not the other ten. Proprietary data, first-hand experience, a genuine angle.
Chapter 9
Relevance
Relevance gets you associated. What you want to be known for. Topical depth and the cluster of pages that make you the obvious source in a category.
Chapter 10
Credibility
Credibility gets you trusted. The proof you are worth citing. Your About page, team profiles, case studies and the E-E-A-T signals raters look for.
Chapter 11
Evaluation
Evaluation tells you whether any of it is working. The dashboard. Citation share, AI-referred traffic, branded search and behavioural signals, the loop that runs it all.
Six questions, six letters
The starter version from chapter 5. Each no tells you which chapter to reread, and in which order to act.
- Structure: does the Structure Audit on the companion site (skill 12) show your site passes?
- Offsite: has more than one independent publication written about you in the last three months?
- Uniqueness: do you publish anything, a number, a dataset, a stance, that no competitor could have written?
- Relevance: when you create a new page, do you know the search intent of the target query, and do you have data to support it?
- Credibility: does a named human being with a real bio and a public profile appear on your About page?
- Evaluation: do you know your AI-referred traffic figure for last month?
Want more than a hallway answer? The interactive scorecard in the reader hub takes three minutes, and the SOURCE Scorecard skill checks your answers against your live site.
Score yourself properly
Eighteen questions, three minutes, and your weakest letter named, with the fixes that move it.
Open the scorecard