Entity
Also known as: Named entity
An entity is a distinct person, organization, place, product or concept that search engines and AI systems can identify on its own and tell apart from others, defined by its attributes and its relationships with other entities.
For a long time, search engines worked by matching words on a page. Today they try to understand things. When Google introduced the Knowledge Graph in 2012, it summed up the shift as “things, not strings”.
What defines an entity
An entity is more than a name. It’s described by attributes and relationships:
- Its name and other names (abbreviations, former names)
- Its type: law firm, clinic, manufacturer
- Location, founding year, website
- Relationships: founder, staff, services, the city it’s based in
Those attributes are what separate two companies that share the same name.
Why it matters
Language models also learn about brands as entities. If your name, address and services are written differently on different sites, a model may treat you as two separate companies or mix your details up with someone else’s. Marking up your site with structured data and using the same details on social profiles and directories cuts down on that confusion.
Example
Imagine three different law firms with the same name. Using the sameAs property in your structured data to point to your own LinkedIn page and Google Business Profile is one way to tell a model which firm you are.