Entity

An entityAn entity is a uniquely identifiable thing or concept, such as an organisation, person, brand, product, place or technical term. Search engines and AI systems process information as entities and their relationships.Open glossary entry → is a uniquely identifiable object or concept. Common types are organisations, people, products, services, places, concepts and events.

The difference from a keywordA keyword is the search term users enter into a search engine to find information, products or providers. Keywords are the basis against which rankings and visibility are measured.Open glossary entry → becomes clear with the example apple: the same word can mean "Apple Inc.", the "apple as a fruit" or "Apple Records". People often grasp the context immediately, while machines need clear signals such as text, links, structured dataSchema markup is code that describes a page's content in a structured way, so search engines understand it not just as text but as clearly classified information.Open glossary entry → and external confirmation.

Search engines, AI systems and knowledge graphsA knowledge graph represents entities as nodes and their relationships as edges. It helps search engines and AI systems model things and how they connect.Open glossary entry → try to recognise such things and their relationships, for example "RankScan → is a → SaaS tool". The more clearly an entity is defined and supported by attributes, evidence and consistent profiles, the more unambiguously it can be classified.

Authors are entities too: for expert content, clearly described people strengthen credibility.