Entity SEO: help Google and AI understand your brand

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Mode about your business and you may get a confident answer that is slightly wrong: an old address, a founder who left years ago, or a description that belongs to a similarly named company in another city. That is rarely a glitch in one chatbot. It usually means the web describes your business in conflicting ways, and the systems reading it have not settled on one clear picture of who you are.

Entity SEO fixes that picture. This guide shows you how to define your brand once on your own site, mirror it in structured data, make your listings and profiles match, claim your knowledge panel where Google allows it, and check and correct what AI assistants say about you.

Who this is for: small-business owners and in-house marketers whose brand is missing, misdescribed or confused with another business in Google results or AI answers. What you will be able to do: write a brand fact sheet, build an entity home page, add Organization markup with sameAs links, audit your profiles for conflicting facts, and get wrong brand facts corrected at their source. Facts that change often are marked "(checked October 2026)".

What an entity is and why AI answers depend on it

An entity is a single, uniquely identifiable thing, such as a person, a place, an organisation or a product, that a machine can tell apart from everything else with a similar name. Entity SEO is the work of making sure search engines and AI assistants recognise your brand as one specific entity and attach the right facts to it.

The difference matters because a name is ambiguous and an entity is not. Take a hypothetical clinic called Sharma Dental. The name alone could match dozens of practices. "Sharma Dental, a family dental clinic in Kothrud, Pune, founded in 2014 by Dr Anjali Sharma, with this website, this phone number and this Google Business Profile" is one thing. The more of those facts agree across the web, the more confidently a system can tell which Sharma Dental a question is about.

Why AI answers lean on brand facts

AI assistants build answers by retrieving pages and combining what they say. When those pages disagree, the assistant has to pick one version, hedge, or leave you out. When they agree, it can describe you plainly and recommend you with more confidence.

Much of what they retrieve is material you already control. In a 2025 Yext study of 6.8 million citations from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, 86% came from brand-managed sources. First-party websites accounted for 44% and business listings for 42%, while forums such as Reddit made up about 2%. Yext sells listings management, so treat the exact split with care, but the direction is useful: your own site and listings are a large share of what AI answers draw on.

What others say about you counts too. An Ahrefs analysis of 75,000 brands, published in December 2025, found that YouTube mentions had the strongest correlation with AI visibility across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, at about 0.737, ahead of every other factor it tested. That is a correlation, not proof that mentions cause visibility, and Ahrefs itself says improving these metrics will not automatically raise AI visibility. It does support a simple point: your entity is built from third-party descriptions as well as your own.

Signs your entity needs work

• AI answers or Google results mix you up with a business that has a similar name.
• An old address, phone number, price or service keeps reappearing after you changed it.
• A search for your brand shows no knowledge panel, or one with the wrong logo or description.
• AI assistants describe your category vaguely ("a company offering services") or not at all.
• Your website, Google Business Profile and social bios each describe you differently.

How Google's Knowledge Graph and knowledge panels work

Google's Knowledge Graph is a database of facts about entities, and knowledge panels are the information boxes Google generates from it automatically. You cannot create a panel yourself, but you can shape the facts it draws on and, if the panel is claimable, suggest corrections.

Google's help page on how the Knowledge Graph works describes it as a database of billions of facts about people, places and things. The facts come from public sources, licensed data and direct input from content owners. Panels are created automatically when there is enough information on the open web, and Google's systems decide query by query whether one is relevant enough to show. Google says its current policy is not to create or delete knowledge panels manually, although it does remove information that breaks its policies.

Two kinds of panel a business can have

A small business can appear in two different panels, and each is managed in a different place.

Google's Get verified on Google page draws the line clearly: a local business that serves customers at a particular location or within a service area should create a Google Business Profile. Many local businesses only ever have the first kind of panel, and that is fine.

What changed in 2026: Search profiles

In June 2026 Google launched Search profiles: claimable pages for creators and publishers that gather their content from platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X. To claim one you need a linked account with a large following on one of those platforms. Search Engine Journal reported that Google lowered the threshold to 10,000 followers, while Google's help page on claiming an existing Search profile still showed a higher figure at the time, and the launch was limited to the United States (checked October 2026). Check that help page for the current threshold and countries. Most local businesses will not qualify, but founder-led and media brands should know it exists.

Where to start: a decision table

Start with whatever controls the facts people see most often: for a local business that is the Google Business Profile, and for an online brand it is the entity home and its Organization markup. Find your situation below, take the first action, then work through the rest of this guide in order.

We built this table from the scope Google gives each tool: Business Profile for locations, knowledge panels for entities with enough web coverage, markup for disambiguation. "Skip for now" lists what usually wastes effort at that stage.

For local businesses this overlaps heavily with local SEO. The markup takes an afternoon; the slow part is getting every outside profile to agree with it.

Create your entity home: the page that defines you

An entity home is the one page on your own website that states your brand's canonical facts in plain text, and that every profile, listing and markup block points back to. For most small businesses it is the About page; for a one-page business it can be the home page.

Search engines and AI assistants read visible text, so write the facts on the page, not only in code. Google's documentation describes adding Organization markup to your home page, so a common setup is facts on the About page, markup on the home page, and the two agreeing word for word.

Write a brand fact sheet first

Before you edit any page, write the facts down in one document. It becomes the source of truth for your site, markup, listings and bios, and it stops each person who edits a profile from improvising a new version of your business.

1. Names: your trading name exactly as it appears on your signage, your legal name if different, and any common short form.
2. A one-sentence definition: what you are, where, for whom and since when.
3. A 25–40 word description to reuse in bios and listings.
4. Contact and place: one address format, one main phone number in one format, your service area and hours.
5. People and dates: founder or owner, key people and founding year.
6. Identifiers: company registration number, VAT or GST number, and an LEI or DUNS number if you have one.
7. Official profiles: website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, plus a Wikidata item if one legitimately exists.
8. Logo: one square file and the URL where it lives.

The one-sentence definition

Write a sentence a stranger could repeat accurately: "[Brand] is a [specific category] in [place] that [does what] for [whom], founded in [year] by [name]." Example: "Sharma Dental is a family dental clinic in Kothrud, Pune, offering check-ups, implants and children's dentistry, founded in 2014 by Dr Anjali Sharma." Put it near the top of the entity home, use it to open your markup description, and reuse it unchanged at the start of every profile bio that allows it.

Keep slogans out of this sentence. "Smiles that last a lifetime" tells a machine nothing. "Family dental clinic in Kothrud, Pune" tells it your category and your location, which are exactly the facts that separate you from a namesake.

What else belongs on the entity home

• The founder and key people by full name, with a line on each person's role and background.
• The address and phone number in the same format as your Google Business Profile.
• Your services, named the way customers name them, each linked to its own page.
• Links to your official profiles, matching the sameAs list in your markup.
• Memberships, registrations and awards a third party can verify, with links to the issuer.

To see which related entities your competitors connect themselves to, run your About page and two or three competitor About pages through the free Entity Coverage Checker. It lists the brands, products, places, standards and concepts each page mentions and flags the ones most competitors cover and you don't. It is a text analysis, not a Knowledge Graph lookup, so add a missing entity only where it is true and useful to a reader.

Organization and LocalBusiness markup with sameAs

Organization markup is structured data that states your brand facts in a machine-readable form, and sameAs is the property that links your entity to the official profiles that confirm it is you. Add one Organization block to your home page and a LocalBusiness block to each location page.

Google's Organization structured data documentation says this markup on your home page can help Google understand your organisation's administrative details and disambiguate it in search results. Some properties work behind the scenes to tell you apart from other organisations, while others, such as your logo, can influence what appears in Search results and knowledge panels. Google allows several sameAs URLs, such as your social media and review profiles.

{
  "@type": "ProfessionalService",
  "name": "Your Brand",
  "areaServed": "Pune",
  "hasOfferCatalog": {
    "itemListElement": ["SEO audit", "Content"]
  },
  "aggregateRating": { "ratingValue": 4.9 }
}

Properties that do the disambiguation work

Google's documentation calls vatID an important trust signal, because people can look a business up in public VAT registries. It supports iso6523Code for business identifiers, written as a scheme prefix, a colon and the number: 0060 for a DUNS number (which Google encourages instead of the separate duns property), 0088 for a GS1 Global Location Number and 0199 for a Legal Entity Identifier. If you already have one of these numbers, it gives machines an identifier that no namesake can share.

sameAs rules that prevent confusion

• List only profiles you control and keep current. A sameAs link to an abandoned account tells machines that the stale page is you.
• Use the canonical profile URL, not a share link, a shortened link or a URL with tracking parameters.
• Add a Wikidata item only if one exists legitimately. Never create one just to fill this field (more on Wikidata below).
• Keep the list identical to the profile links shown on your entity home.

LocalBusiness for each location

If customers visit you or you serve a defined area, add LocalBusiness markup to each location page, using the most specific subtype that fits, such as Dentist or Plumber. Make its name, address, phone and hours identical to the matching Google Business Profile. Our schema markup guide covers subtypes, required properties and testing in detail, so this guide does not repeat them.

Generate it, test it and keep it honest

The free Brand Knowledge Graph Builder reads your home page and key pages (About, Services, Team, Contact), draws the connections a machine can make between your brand and its services, places, people and profiles, lists the missing connections and outputs Organization JSON-LD. Read the missing connections first: each one is usually a fact your entity home does not state. For the location pages, the Schema Markup Generator builds LocalBusiness JSON-LD from a form. Test each live page in Google's Rich Results Test afterwards.

Keep your expectations realistic. Google's May 2026 guide to optimising for generative AI features says structured data isn't required for generative AI search and there is no special schema.org markup to add. It still recommends structured data for rich results, and says markup should only include content that is visible on the page. Treat markup as a consistency tool that removes doubt about which facts are yours, not as a switch that puts you in AI answers.

Make profiles and listings say the same thing

Every profile you control should repeat the facts on your entity home exactly: the same name, address format, phone number, category wording and short description. Small differences are how one business turns into two in a machine's eyes.

The entity home audit: what to keep identical, and where

How we built this table: we listed the brand facts Google's Organization documentation supports, then checked each one against what Google's Business Profile guidelines, Bing's Places sync help page and Apple's Apple Business announcement say about setting or syncing it (October 2026). The "source of truth" column says which version should win when sources disagree. Copy it into a spreadsheet and add a column for each directory you use.

Google Business Profile: your website is the tiebreaker

Google's guidelines for representing your business say your business name should reflect your real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website and stationery and as known to customers. Adding unnecessary information to the name, such as taglines, service descriptions or locations, isn't permitted and can lead to suspension. Address, service area, hours and category belong in their own fields.

Consistency also protects you from unwanted edits. Google's help page on Google updates to your Business Profile explains that when someone suggests an edit that needs your review, you have 4 days to accept or reject it. If you don't respond, Google may publish it automatically when other public information, such as your business website, supports it. A website that clearly states the right facts gives Google a reason to reject a wrong suggestion; a website still showing your old address gives it a reason to accept one. For the profile fields themselves, see our Google Business Profile optimisation guide.

Bing Places: sync from Google, then check

Bing Places for Business can import your listings from Google Business Profile. Bing's help page on syncing says an imported listing is verified automatically if the business is already verified on Google, publishing typically takes 7–12 days, and a listing may show as pending until then (checked October 2026). Bing uses its own categories, so check them after the import. Listings linked to a Business Profile can't currently be edited directly in the Bing dashboard, so you update Google and sync again. Syncing can also create duplicates if a Bing listing already exists, so search Bing for your name afterwards and resolve any copies.

Apple Business: check what migrated

Apple has folded Apple Business Connect into a new, free platform called Apple Business. Apple's March 2026 announcement said it would launch on 14 April 2026 in the US and more than 200 countries and regions, and that existing Business Connect data, including claimed locations, place card information, photos and organisation details, would migrate automatically. If you set up Business Connect years ago, sign in and check that the migrated place card still matches your fact sheet. Migration copies old mistakes as faithfully as correct facts.

Social profiles and directories

Use the one-sentence definition at the start of every bio that allows it, the same logo, and a link to your entity home or home page. Then work through the directories and industry listings that matter in your sector, starting with the ones that rank for your brand name. Our guide to local SEO for AI search explains which listings feed local AI answers.

Score each profile with traffic lights

Score every fact on every profile against your fact sheet. Green means it matches exactly. Amber means it differs only in formatting, such as "Rd" versus "Road". Red means it conflicts: a different number, an old address, a wrong category. Fix the reds first, then the ambers on the profiles that rank for your brand name.

Example: a hypothetical accountancy firm, Patel & Rao Associates, audits seven sources. Its website, markup and Google Business Profile are green. Bing Places is amber on address format and red on category, which did not sync from Google. A directory shows a phone number retired in 2023 (red), and LinkedIn still carries a tagline from a previous rebrand (red). The fix list is four edits, ordered by how visible each profile is in a search for the firm's name.

To check the website side quickly, the free AI Answer Consistency Checker compares up to six pages, such as your home, About and contact pages and any listings it can read. It shows every conflicting name, phone number, address, founding year and claim, with the value to use everywhere. Google pages and many directories block automated reading, so compare your Business Profile by hand against its table.

Claim and correct your knowledge panel

If a knowledge panel appears when you search your brand, claim it so your feedback can be prioritised, then suggest edits one item at a time with public URLs that support each change. If no panel appears, you cannot request one: strengthen the facts on the web and check again from time to time.

How to claim it

1. Sign in to a Google Account you will keep using for the business, or create one.
2. Search Google for your brand name and find the panel.
3. Click "Claim this knowledge panel" at the bottom of the panel. You may find it under the About section.
4. Sign in to one of the official sites or profiles Google lists for the entity, such as your YouTube channel or Search Console property. If Google can't find one, it asks you for more information to verify you.
5. Once verified, sign in with that account, search your name and use Suggest edits at the top of the panel.

According to Google's verification page, not every panel is claimable yet, so check back periodically if the button is missing. If you see a message that someone is already managing the panel, Google suggests sending changes through Feedback, or starting account recovery with the Knowledge Panel support team.

How to suggest edits that get accepted

Google's page on submitting feedback on content about you says anyone can submit feedback, but feedback from a verified user about their own panel can be prioritised, and Google reviews it within a few days, though it says this can sometimes take longer. Submit each suggestion separately, describe the problem and include public URLs that support the change. Google may decline changes it cannot confirm as accurate. The panel's description comes from an outside source and can't be edited directly, so you have to get the source corrected first.

This is where the entity home pays off. A suggestion that says "founded in 2014, not 2012" is far easier to accept when your About page, your Organization markup and your LinkedIn page all say 2014.

Wikidata and Wikipedia: only if you genuinely qualify

Wikidata is the free, structured knowledge base run by the Wikimedia community. Its notability policy accepts an item if it meets at least one of three criteria: it links to a page on a Wikimedia project such as Wikipedia, it refers to a clearly identifiable entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references, or it fills a structural need. A business with independent press coverage or official registrations may qualify. A business whose only references are its own website and press releases probably does not.

Wikipedia is stricter. Its conflict of interest guideline says people editing about their employer or clients are strongly discouraged from editing those articles directly and should propose changes on the article's talk page, and paid editors must disclose who is paying them. It also advises against creating articles about yourself, or anyone you know, except through the Articles for Creation process. If a Wikipedia article about your business has an error that feeds your knowledge panel, request the correction on the talk page with an independent source.

Check how AI assistants describe your brand

Ask the main AI assistants a fixed set of questions about your brand, run each one several times, and record every fact they state and every source they cite. A single run proves little, because AI answers vary from one session to the next.

That variation is large. SparkToro's 2026 research, in which volunteers ran 12 prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI tools 2,961 times, found less than a 1-in-100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI would return the same list of brands in any two responses when the same prompt was asked 100 times. SparkToro still found value in repetition: brands that appear across dozens of runs are the ones the system generally associates with the question. For brand facts, judge what an assistant says most of the time, not what it said once.

A brand prompt set you can reuse

1. "What is [brand]?"
2. "Who founded [brand], and when?"
3. "Where is [brand] based, and how do I contact it?"
4. "What services does [brand] offer?"
5. "Is [brand] the same company as [similar name]?"
6. "What do customers say about [brand]?"
7. "Best [category] in [city]", to see whether you are named at all.

How to run and record the test

1. Run each prompt in ChatGPT with search, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, using a fresh or logged-out session where possible.
2. Repeat each prompt at least three times per assistant, on different days, and note the location you tested from.
3. Record each stated fact (name, category, location, founder, year, phone, services) and mark it correct, outdated, wrong or missing.
4. Copy the URLs each answer cites. These are the pages feeding the assistant, and they become your fix list.
5. Repeat monthly and after every fix, and log what you changed in between.

Example (hypothetical) scoring sheet for Sharma Dental after nine runs across three assistants:

The sheet turns a vague worry into a short task list: fix the directory and the social bio, and ask the news site for a correction. If an assistant cannot see your site at all, check access first. The free AI Crawler Checker reads your robots.txt and shows, crawler by crawler, whether ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude, Google and Bing may fetch a page. Our guide on which AI crawlers to block explains which bots you can refuse without dropping out of AI search answers.

For a wider view of how assistants choose which businesses to name, read how ChatGPT recommends businesses. For Google's own count of how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, use the Search Console generative AI report.

Fix wrong or outdated brand facts in AI answers

Fix wrong facts at their source, not in the chat window: find the page the assistant drew on, correct it or ask its owner to, and make sure your own pages state the right fact clearly. AI assistants that search the web repeat what the web says, so the answer only changes after the sources do.

Correcting a chatbot inside your own conversation does not change the pages it learned the wrong fact from. Google's AI Overviews do have a feedback route: Google's help page on AI Overviews explains that you can mark an overview as bad with the thumbs-down icon and choose Report a problem for inaccurate content. Use it, but treat it as a signal to Google, not as the fix.

Decision table: match the symptom to the fix

How long fixes take

Some timings are documented. Bing says synced listings typically take 7–12 days to publish, and Google says it reviews verified knowledge panel feedback within a few days. Most are not: we found no published Google timetable for picking up a corrected About page, and an AI assistant only reflects a change once it retrieves the updated source. Plan to re-test monthly, not daily, and keep a dated log so you can connect each fix to what changed.

What not to do

• Don't add keywords or locations to your Business Profile name; Google's guidelines say it can lead to suspension.
• Don't publish inflated or invented facts. AI answers repeat them, and copies are hard to retract.
• Don't create profiles you won't maintain just to lengthen your sameAs list, and don't mark up facts that aren't visible on the page.

A 30-day entity SEO plan

Work in this order: facts, then your own site, then your profiles, then outside sources, then testing. Each week builds the evidence the next week relies on.

After the first month, repeat the prompt test monthly and the full audit every quarter, or straight away after a move, a rebrand, a new phone number or a change of ownership. Treat the fact sheet as a living document: when something changes, update it first and everything else from it.

Entity work sits underneath most of our AI search optimisation, because AI answers can only recommend a business they can identify. For the content and citation side, read our guide on how to get cited in AI search. If you would like a second pair of eyes on your brand facts, get in touch.