Pillar 46,150 UK searches / mo

Authority Network

Structured data and entities that let machines understand and connect the page: schema, Knowledge Graph, Wikidata, digital PR.

Answer first

The authority network is the machine-readable layer that lets a search engine or language model understand what a page is about and connect it to a known entity: valid JSON-LD structured data, Organization and Person nodes with sameAs links to Wikidata, LinkedIn and other corroborating profiles, consistent name and address data, and off-site mentions that agree with the on-site story. Google's Knowledge Graph holds about 54 billion entities, and a brand that is not one of them is invisible to entity-based retrieval. This hub links the Entity Authority framework, the Schema Scanner, the Knowledge Graph gap analysis and the pillar-four audit checks.

Before a machine can cite you it has to know who you are and trust it has the right entity. This pillar is the machine-readable layer: schema validity, entity and Knowledge Graph signals, consistent sameAs references and off-site corroboration. Third-largest commercial-intent cluster, led by schema markup and knowledge graph demand.

Which frameworks explain schema markup and entity authority?

Which free tools and lab builds cover schema markup and entity authority?

What has Laurelin published on schema markup and entity authority?

Which of the 330 audit checks belong to schema markup and entity authority?

59 checks in the Authority Network pillar of the 330-check AEO audit, each cited to a primary source. The most consulted first.

All 59 authority network checks

Frequently asked questions about schema markup and entity authority

What is entity authority?

The degree to which a brand, product or person exists as a distinct, verified entity in the knowledge graphs that search engines and AI models draw on. It is built by consistent structured data, resolvable sameAs identifiers, a Wikidata item where the notability rules allow one, and third-party mentions that corroborate the same facts.

Which schema types matter most for AI search?

Organization and Person with sameAs (entity resolution), Article or TechArticle with author, dates and about (provenance), FAQPage and speakable (passage extraction), and BreadcrumbList (site hierarchy). Types the page is not genuinely eligible for add nothing and can trigger a manual action.