Entity

An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing, such as a company, a product, a person or a place, that a search engine or AI model can recognize and connect to facts about it. Google introduced its Knowledge Graph in 2012 under the phrase "things, not strings": a model of real-world entities and their relationships that at launch held more than 500 million objects and more than 3.5 billion facts about them and how they relate.

Why it matters for AI visibility

An engine can recommend your brand only if it can tell your brand apart from everything with a similar name and connect it to the right facts: what you sell, who it is for and who you compete with. If your company shares its name with another company, a place or a common word, answers may mix the two up, or leave you out when it is unclear which one the buyer means. Facts that differ across your site and profiles can make the confusion worse.

How to strengthen it

• One description everywhere. Use the same name, short description and category on your site, your profiles and directory listings.
• Organization markup. Add structured data for your organization. Google says it can help Google "disambiguate your organization in search results," and its sameAs property links your site to your official profiles elsewhere.
• Consistent mentions elsewhere. Earn brand mentions on the third-party pages engines cite, using your name and category the way you do.

How to check it

Ask each engine "What is [your brand]?" and "Who are [your brand]'s competitors?" If the answers describe another company, an old product or the wrong category, the entity needs work, and the pages the answers cite show where the confusion comes from. Answers that state facts no page supports are a different problem, a hallucination.