Entity-Based GEO: How Knowledge Graphs Shape What AI Says About You
Ask an assistant what your company does. The answer it gives is assembled from an entity record the model holds about you, not from the copy on your homepage. If that record is thin, stale or wrong, no amount of landing page polish will fix the description buyers see.
What is entity-based GEO?
Entity-based GEO is the practice of shaping the structured facts an AI engine associates with your brand, so its generated answers describe you accurately. It works on identity rather than keywords: who you are, what category you belong to, who founded you, what you sell, and which independent sources confirm it.
Why models think in entities, not pages
Language models store meaning as vectors, and they resolve a brand name to a cluster of associated facts. Two things decide what sits in that cluster: what structured data says about you, and how consistently independent sources repeat it. A page can rank without either. An entity cannot form without both.
This is why a small company with a clean, well-cited entity record often gets described more accurately than a larger competitor with a bigger site and no structured identity.
The three inputs that shape your entity
1. Your own structured data
Organization schema on your site is the primary declaration. It should carry your legal name, logo, founding date, founders, address, contact points, and a sameAs array pointing at every profile you control. Keep it identical across every page rather than letting each template invent its own variant.
2. Public knowledge bases
Wikidata is openly licensed and widely ingested, which makes it disproportionately influential. A Wikidata item with correct properties for industry, founders, headquarters and official website gives models a machine-readable anchor. Notability rules apply, so this works for organisations with genuine third-party coverage and not for every business.
3. Corroboration across independent sources
Models weight agreement. If your site, your LinkedIn, a directory listing and a news article all state the same founding year and category, confidence rises. If they disagree, the model either hedges or picks the most repeated version, which may not be the correct one.
How to audit your current entity
- Ask four assistants to describe your company in three sentences. Note every factual error and every hedge.
- Search your brand name and check which sources dominate the first two pages. Those are the ones feeding the model.
- Validate your Organization schema and confirm the sameAs array resolves to live profiles.
- Check whether competitors appear in your descriptions. That usually means the category association is stronger for them than for you.
Fixing a wrong entity record
Entity corrections are slow because they require agreement, not a single edit. Work in this order: correct your own schema first, then the profiles you control, then push for corrections in third-party sources that repeat the error. Publish an authoritative about page that states the facts plainly, because that page becomes the citation others copy from.
Expect weeks, not days. Models refresh on their own schedule, and the change only appears once enough sources agree.
What this looks like when it works
The assistant names your category correctly without prompting. It attributes your product to you rather than to a competitor. It cites your own pages when asked for detail. Those three outcomes are worth more than a ranking improvement, because they decide whether you make the shortlist at all.
You can see how engines currently describe you with a free AI visibility audit, or work through the entity chapter in the Academy.
Frequently asked questions
What is an entity in SEO and GEO?
An entity is a uniquely identifiable thing, such as a company, person or product, that search and AI systems track as a set of structured facts rather than as a string of text. Entity work shapes those facts so machines describe you correctly.
Does Wikidata affect AI answers?
It has real influence because it is openly licensed, machine-readable and widely ingested by systems that feed language models. A correct Wikidata item gives engines an anchor for your industry, founders and official site, though notability rules mean not every business qualifies.
What schema should I use to define my organisation?
Organization schema carrying legal name, logo, founding date, founders, address, contact points and a sameAs array listing every profile you control. Keep it byte-identical across templates so engines see one consistent declaration.
Why does ChatGPT describe my company incorrectly?
Usually because independent sources disagree or your structured data is missing, so the model falls back on the most repeated version it has seen. Correct your own schema first, then the profiles you control, then push for third-party corrections.
How long does it take to fix an entity error in AI answers?
Typically weeks. Models refresh on their own schedule and only change a description once enough independent sources agree on the new facts. A single edit on one page rarely moves it.
Is entity optimisation different from keyword optimisation?
Yes. Keyword work targets what a page is about, entity work targets what a brand is. A page can rank on keywords with no entity presence, and a brand can be described accurately by AI without ranking first for any single term.
Want this done for your site?
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