Part 2 of 7 · The Beginner’s Guide to Entity Engineering
Machines resolve your identity from a short list of sources, not the whole web. Five surfaces carry most of the weight: your own website, your schema markup, Wikidata, Google’s own surfaces, and the independent sources that mention you. You can check every one of them in an afternoon. This chapter maps the five, explains why Wikidata anchors hardest, settles the Wikipedia question, and shows what to claim on Google first. Knowing where machines look turns entity work from guesswork into a checklist.
Where do search engines and AI actually look you up?
Search engines and AI resolve your identity from five surfaces. They are your own website, your schema markup, Wikidata, Google’s own surfaces, and independent sources that mention you. None of the five is hidden, and each one is checkable today.
- Your website. This is home base. Machines read it for your name, what you do, who runs it, and how to reach you, and they check whether the rest of the web agrees.
- Your schema markup. This is structured data embedded in your pages. It states, in a form machines parse directly, who you are and what connects to you. It is the difference between hoping a machine infers your details and telling it plainly.
- Wikidata. This is a free, public knowledge base of entities that feeds search and AI worldwide. A clean, well-sourced item there is a machine-readable anchor for your identity.
- Google’s own surfaces. These are your Business Profile, your Knowledge Panel if you have one, and Google’s wider knowledge graph. For a local business, the Business Profile is often the most consequential record of all.
- Independent corroborating sources. These are directories, press coverage, professional profiles, review platforms, and the social accounts you actually maintain. Machines weigh agreement, so many independent sources describing you the same way is what trust looks like at scale.
The practical point for a beginner is simple: this is a short list. Auditing where you stand across all five takes an afternoon, not a quarter.
[PASTE STEP — insert image block: entity-layer diagram (final art of 260812-Fig-Entity_Layer-SKETCH.png). Alt text: “Five surfaces — your website, schema markup, Wikidata, Google’s surfaces, and corroborating sources — feeding one resolved entity record that machines read.” This is also the social card.]
What is Wikidata, and why do machines trust it?
Wikidata is a free, public knowledge base of entities, each with a unique identifier, that feeds search and AI worldwide. Think of it as a structured database of things, not articles. Every entity gets a stable ID and a set of statements about it. Anyone, and any machine, can read it.
Machines trust it for three reasons. It is open, so systems pull from it freely. It is structured, so a machine reads it without guessing. And its statements are meant to carry sources, so a good item is evidence, not assertion. That is why a Wikidata item anchors your identity so hard. It lives in a place machines already trust, keyed to an ID they can follow. Building that item is its own craft, and the book walks through items that survive review. For now, the point is simple: Wikidata is the anchor, and it is worth reaching.
Do I need a Wikipedia page?
No. Wikipedia is one corroboration source among many, and its notability rules put a page out of reach for most businesses. People conflate Wikipedia and Wikidata because the names rhyme, but they do different jobs. Wikipedia holds encyclopedic articles to a strict bar for who qualifies. Wikidata is a structured entity record with a far lower barrier to a legitimate, well-sourced entry.
So do not chase a Wikipedia page as a first move. Never pay someone who promises to manufacture one. If genuine, independent coverage of you builds up over time, a page may follow on its own. Until then, your effort belongs on the surfaces you can influence: your site, your schema, your Wikidata item, your Google presence, and honest mentions.
What should I claim on Google directly?
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile first. For a local business, it is often the single most consequential entity record you control. It feeds Maps, the local pack, and the panel that appears when someone searches your name. It is also free.
Completing it means more than claiming it. Fill in your exact name, address, phone, hours, and category. Keep every field accurate and identical to your website. An abandoned or half-filled profile is a weak signal. A complete, consistent, maintained one is a strong signal. Get this surface right and you hand Google a clean, first-party record of who and where you are, which is what it needs to resolve you correctly.
Source: this chapter adapts Part II of Entity Engineering by Kim Harris. Written by the team at Quantum Quill Digital. Last updated: September 2026.
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