About Lily Ray

Speaker identifier

Lily Ray Founder, Algorythmic

Speaker bio

Lily Ray is the founder of Algorythmic, an SEO and AI search consulting practice focused on SEO, AI Search (AEO/GEO), E-E-A-T, and Google Discover strategy. She is also VP of SEO Strategy and Research at Amsive, where she leads the research agenda on algorithm updates, E-E-A-T, and AI search. Born into a family of software engineers, web developers, and technical writers, Lily brings a strong technical background, performance-driven habits, and forward-thinking creativity to every program she oversees. She was named the #1 Most Influential SEO Expert by USA Today in 2022, has delivered keynotes at BrightonSEO and Affiliate Summit West, and has been conducting the deepest sustained analytical inquiry into E-E-A-T and Google’s trust evaluation systems that the industry has produced.

What Lily brings to Kalicube Summit 2026

Lily Ray brings the deepest sustained analytical work on E-E-A-T in the industry to the Credibility layer of UCD. Her years of research into how Google’s trust evaluation systems work in practice — not in theory, not from documentation alone, but from observed search behaviour across thousands of queries and algorithm updates — gives her an empirical picture of how AI engines decide whether to trust a brand that no other speaker at the summit can match.

At Kalicube Summit 2026, Lily covers the Credibility layer of UCD (Understandability, Credibility, Deliverability) — the corroboration substrate at the Grounded and Displayed gates where AI engines decide whether to commit to recommending a brand or hedge. Her vantage pairs structurally with Krishna Madhavan’s Trustworthy gate at Microsoft: two independent angles on the same load-bearing credibility layer. The framework’s NEEATT extension (Transparency credited to Jarno van Driel) appears in this session as the natural evolution of the trust-evaluation conversation.

Lily’s work at Algorythmic and Amsive independently documents the credibility and trust signals that determine whether AI engines recommend with confidence or hedge — exactly the mechanism the framework names at the Grounded and Displayed gates. Her E-E-A-T research is the industry’s most rigorous external inquiry into the mechanism the framework names as the Credibility layer.

Lily’s place in the wider framework conversation

Lily Ray’s E-E-A-T research independently documents the credibility and trust evaluation mechanism the framework names as the C in UCD. Her years of analytical work on how Google’s quality systems evaluate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness map directly to what the framework calls the corroboration substrate at the Grounded and Displayed gates. Her session is the industry’s most empirically grounded treatment of why some brands earn AI engine confidence and others do not.

Lily’s sessions at Kalicube Summit 2026

Session 1.15: Lily Ray on E-E-A-T, NEEATT, and the Credibility layer of UCD

Day 1 (June 24, 2026). Pre-recorded, on-demand from session drop. Framework concept: Credibility (the C of UCD), coined by Jason Barnard in 2022. SEL article: The funnel flip: Why AI forces a bottom-up acquisition strategy, Article 10 of Jason Barnard at Kalicube’s Search Engine Land series.