What Is Entity Recognition?

In our June 2026 study of 216 Shopify storefronts, 72% of the stores failed Entity Integrity, our check on machine readable product and brand data. The method and every figure are in the June 2026 study.

What does entity recognition look like for a real business?

Picture a family run bakery. Its website, Instagram profile and Google Business Profile each spell its name a little differently. One of them still shows the old street address from before a move. A regular customer knows it is one bakery, but a machine sees three candidates and no proof that they match, so it may describe none of them with confidence.

A business software company can have the opposite problem when its product shares a name with an older company in another country. Its About page and its Organization structured data should state the legal name, the headquarters city and the product category. Then the machine can tell the two companies apart.

Which signals does AI use to recognize a business?

• Organization structured data on your homepage names the business, its logo and its URL, and its sameAs property links to the profiles you control.
• Your About page says in plain sentences who runs the business, where it is and what it sells.
• Your business name, address and phone number match on your website, your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and your social profiles.
• Independent pages, such as press coverage and industry directories, describe the business in the same way.

How do I check entity recognition for my own business?

1. Search Google for your exact business name and check whether a knowledge panel appears and shows the right business.
2. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini what your business is and where it is based, and write down every detail that is wrong. Answers vary between runs, so ask each one twice.
3. Open your homepage in Google's Rich Results Test and check that one Organization item appears, with your logo and your sameAs links. On Shopify this markup usually comes from the theme or from an app. Fix a missing or doubled item in that app's settings, or ask your theme developer to change it under Online Store > Themes, the three dot button and Edit code.
4. Compare the name, address and phone number in your website footer with your Google Business Profile and Bing Places, and correct any that differ.
5. Make sure your About page names the founder or the team and links to the same profiles that your sameAs property lists.

Common questions

How does AI decide that my profiles are one business?

An AI system checks whether several independent sources describe your business the same way, from your own website to your listings and press coverage. When the name, address, links and description agree, the system can treat them as one business.

What is a sameAs link?

A sameAs link is a property in your Organization structured data. It lists the URLs of your official profiles, such as Instagram, LinkedIn or a Wikidata entry, and it tells a machine that those profiles and your website belong to the same business.

Does my business need a Wikidata entry?

A Wikidata entry can help a machine connect your profiles. It helps only when the business meets Wikidata's notability policy and the entry matches your own pages. Start with your website and your listings, which you control today.

Where can I read more?

These guides walk through each signal in detail. To see how a crawler reads your own Organization markup and About page, run a free scan of five key pages.

• Why ChatGPT confuses your brand with someone else
• How sameAs links prove you are the same brand everywhere
• Why your business address has to match everywhere AI looks
• What your About and Press pages tell AI
• How to find and remove duplicate Organization markup