Glossary
Entity SEO: things, not strings.
What entity SEO is, how Google's Knowledge Graph treats your brand as a thing, and why consistent facts matter in Google and in AI answers.
Short answer
What is entity SEO?
Entity SEO, or entity optimization, presents your brand as one clear, consistent thing, not a loose set of keywords. Google launched its Knowledge Graph on May 16, 2012. Google called it a model of real-world entities and their relationships: "things, not strings." In practice, you state the same facts about your brand everywhere.
In brief
Four things to know first.
An entity is a thing
A brand, person or place that exists apart from the words used to name it.
Google models relationships
Its Knowledge Graph links entities to facts and to each other, not just to keywords.
Consistency is the work
The same facts about your brand, repeated across your site and the web, make it easier to recognize.
It builds on SEO
Entity work sits on top of crawlable, useful pages. It does not replace them.
The idea
From strings to things.
Google introduced the Knowledge Graph on May 16, 2012. It described a model that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: “things, not strings.”
At launch it held more than 500 million objects and more than 3.5 billion facts about them and their relationships.
| Strings | Things | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Words typed into a search box | A real-world brand, person or place |
| Matching things, not strings | The letters in the query | The meaning and the facts behind it |
| Ambiguity | One word, many possible meanings | One entity, kept apart from lookalikes |
How it works
What the Knowledge Graph does.
Google said the Knowledge Graph helps disambiguate queries, summarize key facts about a topic, and help users go deeper and broader.
Its example: the facts shown for Tom Cruise answered 37 percent of the next queries people ask about him.
Disambiguate
Tell apart entities that share a name.
Summarize
Show the key facts about a topic at a glance.
Go deeper and broader
Follow relationships to related entities and questions.
See where AI names your brand
The free AI audit runs your buyers' questions through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini and shows where you appear.
Why it matters
Why entities matter for AI answers.
Google says its AI features rest on its core Search ranking and quality systems. AI engines also read many sources before writing one answer.
Facts that match across your site, profiles and directories give an engine less to guess. Treat this as a reasonable practice, not a proven ranking factor.
Less guesswork
Matching facts leave an engine nothing to reconcile.
Easier to recognize
A brand described the same way each time is easier to name.
Same base as SEO
Crawlable, useful pages still come first.
What to do
How to do entity optimization.
Start with plain facts about your business, then make them match wherever they appear.
Write down the facts
Name, what you do, where, who runs it and which products or services you offer.State them on your site
Put the same facts on your homepage and about page, in plain text a crawler can read.Match them elsewhere
Update your profiles, directories and listings so they say the same thing.Link related things
Connect your pages to the products, people and topics they describe.Check what assistants say
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity about your brand and note what they get wrong.
FAQ
Entities in search: common questions.
What is an entity in SEO?
An entity in SEO is a distinct real-world thing, such as a brand, person or place, that a search engine can recognize apart from the words used to name it. Google's Knowledge Graph models these entities and the relationships between them.
What is entity optimization?
Entity optimization is the work of making a brand a clear, consistent entity: stating the same facts about it on your site and across the web, so search engines and AI assistants can recognize it and describe it correctly.
What does "things, not strings" mean?
"Things, not strings" is how Google described the Knowledge Graph in 2012. Instead of matching only the words in a query, the system understands real-world entities and how they relate to one another.
Is this work different from regular SEO?
Entity work builds on regular SEO, which aims to rank your pages in Google's results. It adds a focus on your brand's facts and keeping them consistent across your site and other sources, so the brand reads as one clear thing.
Do I need special schema markup for this work?
Special markup is not required for Google's AI search. Google says structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and no special schema.org markup is needed. Clear facts in readable page text matter most; markup stays useful for rich result eligibility.
See how AI engines describe your brand.
We run your buyers' questions through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini and show you the gap.