The companion glossary · part of The Beginner’s Guide to Entity Engineering
This glossary defines the vocabulary of entity engineering in plain language, so no term in this guide trips you up. Each entry is short and self-contained, meant to be read on its own. The terms are alphabetical, so start anywhere. Where a word has more depth behind it, the chapter that covers it is noted, and when a definition raises a bigger question, the book goes further.
AI assistant — A system that answers questions in natural language, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. It looks up entities and composes a direct answer rather than returning a list of links.
AI Overview — Google’s AI-generated answer shown at the top of many search results. It summarizes an answer and cites a small number of sources.
Answer-first content — Writing that opens each section with one plain sentence answering the reader’s question, then supports it. It is the structure an AI can lift and quote, and it is how this guide is written.
Attribution — The signals that say who created a piece of content and why they are qualified. It is one of the seven groups in the Periodic Table of Entity Engineering.
Canonical identity — The one exact, authoritative form of your name and details that you use everywhere. Choosing it and sticking to it is the first of the three core habits.
Co-citation — Being mentioned alongside related people, places, or organizations by independent sources. It helps machines place you in the right context.
Corroboration — Independent sources confirming what you say about yourself. It is the strongest evidence a machine weighs, and the subject of Chapter 4.
DefinedTerm — A schema.org type for a single defined word or phrase. This glossary marks up each entry as a DefinedTerm.
DefinedTermSet — A schema.org type for a collection of defined terms, such as a glossary. This page is published as one.
Disambiguation — Telling a machine which “you” you are when others share your name. Clear identity signals prevent a machine from blending you with a namesake.
DUNS number — A unique business identifier issued by Dun & Bradstreet. It is one of the outside-registry identifiers that anchor an organization’s identity.
E-E-A-T — Google’s shorthand for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It describes the qualities Google’s systems look for in a trustworthy source.
Entity — A specific, identifiable thing in the world: a person, business, place, product, or concept. It is the opposite of a keyword, which is just a string of text.
Entity engineering — The practice of making machines recognize, resolve, and trust who you are. It is the discipline this whole guide teaches.
Entity resolution — The step where a machine matches a name to one specific entity before it answers. Its outcome is recognition, confusion, or a blank (see Chapter 1).
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — The practice of optimizing content and identity to be retrieved and cited by AI answer engines. It extends classic SEO into the answer layer.
Google Business Profile — The free listing that feeds Google Maps, the local pack, and the panel shown when someone searches your name. For a local business it is often the most consequential entity record (see Chapter 2).
JSON-LD — The format used to embed schema.org structured data in a page. It is a small block of labeled facts written for machines (see Chapter 3).
KG-ID (Knowledge Graph ID) — Google’s internal identifier for an entity in its knowledge graph. Having one means Google recognizes you as a distinct thing.
Knowledge graph — A database of entities and the relationships between them, built from trusted sources and used by search engines to understand things rather than match words.
Knowledge Panel — The box in Google results that displays an entity’s key facts. It appears once Google is confident it has resolved the entity.
NAP — Name, Address, and Phone. Keeping these identical, character for character, across the web is a high-value consistency habit (see Chapter 4).
Notability — The bar a subject must clear to earn a Wikipedia article. Most businesses do not meet it, which is why Wikipedia is not a required first move (see Chapter 2).
ORCID — A persistent identifier for researchers and authors. It anchors a person’s scholarly identity in an outside registry.
Organization schema — Structured data that describes a business or organization, including its name, URL, and profiles. It is one of the core types most businesses need.
Periodic Table of Entity Engineering — The book’s framework organizing sixty-four entity signals into seven groups. Beginners work from the groups, not the individual elements.
Person schema — Structured data that describes a person, such as a founder or author. It is how you declare the people behind an organization.
QID — A Wikidata item’s unique identifier, written as a Q followed by a number. It is a stable, machine-readable anchor for an entity.
Ranking model — The stage in AI search that scores retrieved passages and keeps the best ones. Unclear writing gets dropped here before an answer is written (see Chapter 7).
Reasoning engine — An AI system that reasons over entities and sources rather than only indexing them. Optimizing for it is advanced work the book covers.
Retrieval — The first stage of AI search, where the system pulls candidate sources. If retrieval never pulls you, nothing else can help you (see Chapter 7).
Rich Results Test — Google’s free tool that checks structured data eligible for a rich result, such as Product or FAQ. It does not report every schema type.
sameAs — The schema property that lists your other profiles and tells a machine they are the same entity as you. It is the thread that unifies a scattered presence (see Chapter 3).
Schema Markup Validator — A free tool that validates every schema type on a page, not just rich-result types. It is the better first stop for checking your markup.
Schema.org — The shared vocabulary that structured data uses. It defines the types and properties, such as Organization, Person, and sameAs.
Structured data — Machine-readable labeled facts embedded in a page, usually as JSON-LD using schema.org. It tells machines who you are instead of making them guess (see Chapter 3).
Wikidata — A free, public, structured knowledge base of entities, each with a unique QID, that feeds search and AI worldwide. A well-sourced item is a strong anchor (see Chapter 2).
Wikipedia — The online encyclopedia. It is one corroboration source among many, and it is distinct from Wikidata, which is a structured entity record.
Source: this glossary adapts the vocabulary defined in Entity Engineering by Kim Harris. Written by the team at Quantum Quill Digital. Last updated: September 2026.
Guide navigation: The Beginner’s Guide (hub) · Start acting: The 30-Day Quick Start
Quantum Quill Digital helps personal brands, academics, SMBs and marketing teams build entity-first visibility across search and AI. Authority, Engineered.