Glossary

What is an entity in SEO and AI search?

Also known as named entity, entity SEO

Definition

An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing, such as a business, person, place, product or brand. Search engines and AI models recognise it and connect it to facts, rather than treating it as a string of words.

Key points

An entity is a real thing, such as a business or person, that engines recognise and link to facts.
Engines tell entities with the same name apart using context like address, website and people.
A clear, consistent entity makes it easier for AI engines to name and describe you correctly.

What does it mean in practice?

A small chain of opticians shares its name with a window cleaner, a software product and a care home. To a search engine, those are four entities that happen to share a name. It tells them apart using context, such as the address, the website, the people involved and what others say about each one.

Businesses can help by describing themselves clearly and consistently. That means the same name, address and details everywhere. It also means structured data that says what the business is, and links to trusted profiles that confirm it.

Why does it matter for AI search?

AI engines answer questions about things, not keywords. If an engine is unsure which of the four businesses you are, it may mix up your facts with another one, or leave you out. A clear entity makes it easier to be named and described correctly.

Google made this shift public in 2012 with its Knowledge Graph, which it summed up as things, not strings. The entity audit in Axiom GEO, also a free public tool, rebuilds the entity graph a site publishes and returns scored findings with fixes. Our entity SEO guide explains more.

These terms connect to entities.

Knowledge graph, a database of entities and the links between them.
Schema markup, how a site describes its entities to machines.
NAP consistency, keeping your core details the same everywhere.
Brand mention, when an AI answer names your entity.

Common questions

What is entity SEO?

Entity SEO is the work of making it clear to search engines and AI models exactly who your business is and what it does. It covers consistent details across the web, structured data with stable IDs, links to trusted profiles and clear pages about your people, services and locations.

How do I check how my site describes its entity?

Look at the structured data on your key pages and check that it names the business the same way each time, links to your trusted profiles and connects authors and locations. The free entity audit on this site crawls key pages and returns scored findings with fixes.

Reviewed 26 September 2026

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