sameAs

sameAs is a Schema.org property that lists other authoritative URLs referring to the same thing as the current entity. In practice it ties a brand’s profiles scattered across platforms into a single entity.

It appears in structured data types such as Organization and Person, and its value is an array of URLs. When a machine performs entity resolution, it has to decide whether two records describe the same object. sameAs is one of the clues it uses to make that call (see brand entity and knowledge graph).

A minimal example

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "@id": "https://example.com/#organization",
  "name": "Example Co.",
  "url": "https://example.com/",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/example-co",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example_Co",
    "https://example.cn/"
  ]
}

What to list

Include pages that the organization genuinely owns, or that exist specifically to describe it, and that anyone can open without logging in:

• The official website and its other language versions
• Encyclopedia entries such as Wikipedia or, for Chinese companies, Baidu Baike
• Public registry or official filing pages
• Official profiles on social and content platforms
• App store listings
• Entries in industry directories

The test for each URL: is this page about the organization itself, and will it still be there next year?

Common mistakes

• Listing campaign pages, single articles or tracking links. These describe a promotion or a story, not the organization.
• Listing dead links or pages behind a login. A crawler that cannot open the page cannot use it as evidence.
• Inconsistent sameAs lists across pages. If the homepage, about page and footer each declare a different set, the machine reads several versions of the entity. The standard approach is to declare the Organization once, with a stable @id, and reference that @id everywhere else.
• Hand-written JSON. A stray quotation mark can invalidate the whole block silently. Generate the markup from data instead.

Why it matters for AI visibility

Companies that operate in more than one market often have a fragmented footprint: a Chinese site, an English site, a WeChat Official Account, a LinkedIn page, directory listings under slightly different names. Without explicit links between them, a search engine or model may treat them as separate entities, or merge one of them with a different company that shares the name. That is what name confusion rate measures.

sameAs is a low-cost way to say “these are all us.” It works best together with consistent facts on each profile: the same legal name, location and description.

Limits

sameAs is a self-declaration, not proof. It makes it easier for machines to group your profiles together, but authority still comes from the pages themselves and from how other sites reference them (see third-party evidence). Listing a directory entry does not make the directory more trustworthy, and listing a profile you do not control can backfire if its content contradicts your site.

The strongest setup is verifiable in both directions: your website lists the profile, and the profile links back to your website. When a machine can confirm the connection from both ends, the claim no longer rests on your word alone.

Quick checklist

1. One Organization declaration with a stable @id.
2. sameAs URLs that are public, live and about the organization.
3. Each listed profile uses the same name and core facts as the website.
4. Each listed profile links back to the official site where the platform allows it.
5. The list is reviewed whenever a profile is added, renamed or retired.

For a review of how your entity markup and profiles line up, see the free GEO audit.