The entity home page: an About-page checklist for SaaS

Search engines and AI assistants keep running into the same question about a small SaaS company: which thing does this name refer to? Your product name may also be a common word, an old open-source project or a company in another country. Some practitioners call the page that settles this question the entity home. Usually it is the About page: one URL that says who the company is, what it makes, who runs it and where else it officially appears online.

"Entity home" is a practitioner term, not a Google one. Google's documentation never uses it. What Google does document is narrower: where to put Organization markup, what sameAs means, how knowledge panels are generated and claimed, and what its quality raters are told to look for when they try to work out who is behind a website. This article teaches a method built from those documents. It makes no claims about results.

Each claim below has one of four labels: official guidance (a platform documenting its own product), research finding, our observation, or hypothesis. Everything was checked on 2026-10-06. Knowledge panel help pages carry no dates, so check them again before you rely on them after early 2027.

What a page about your company can and cannot do

Here is Google's documented position in brief, before the checklist.

What Google says the page and its markup can do. Organization structured data "can help Google better understand" a company's administrative details and tell it apart from other organizations in search results. Some properties work behind the scenes for disambiguation. Others, such as logo, can influence what appears in results and knowledge panels (official guidance, Organization structured data, page dated 2026-09-08, EN-01).

What Google does not say. Nothing in that documentation says the markup creates a knowledge panel, makes Google treat you as a recognized entity, or affects rankings. Google's general structured data guidelines say correct markup does not guarantee any search feature (official guidance, LC-10). Google's knowledge panel help says panels are generated automatically from information across the web, and that Google's current policy is not to create or delete them by hand (official guidance, EN-05, EN-06).

Some practitioners argue that markup can only link up a company that is already known, never make an unknown one known. That fits Google's documentation, though Google doesn't put it in those words. Read it as: the page states your facts clearly, and other sources have to confirm them.

What about AI assistants? Google states that its AI features don't require structured data and that there is no special markup to add (official guidance, AI optimization guide, M1-13; AI features, M1-14). None of the OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity or Gemini API documentation in our register (N1-04 to N1-09) says it uses Organization markup or sameAs to recognize a company. So any claim that this markup helps ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini name you correctly is a hypothesis (EN-13). Chapter 7 of the book takes the same line: schema is accurate labeling, not a citation lever. A test design is at the end of this article.

What raters are told to look for

Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines are not a ranking manual. Google says no single rating directly changes how a page appears in Search (official guidance, N2-01, M1-10). They are still the clearest public statement of what Google means by "it should be clear who is behind this site". The guidelines are dated 2025-09-11 (EN-10, EN-11).

• Who is responsible. Raters are told that every page belongs to a website, and it should be clear which person, company or organization is responsible for the site and who created the content. The guidelines note that most sites have "about us" or "contact us" pages that say who owns them (section 2.5.2).
• Contact and customer service. How much contact information a site needs depends on its purpose. The guidelines call it extremely important for sites that handle money (section 2.5.3). Section 4.5.1 goes further: any site that asks users to create passwords, share personal information or make financial transactions must give extensive contact information. Almost every SaaS product does all three.
• Reputation comes from elsewhere. Raters are told to be skeptical of what a site says about itself and to look for independent reviews, news articles, expert recommendations and similar sources (section 3.3.1). The research method is to search the brand name while excluding the brand's own domain (section 3.3.3). The guidelines specifically say traffic-estimate sites are not reputation evidence.

That last point sets the limits of an About page. Raters are asked to check it, not to believe it. Your page states the facts, and independent sources decide whether they hold up.

Google's people-first content guidance says the same thing to site owners. One of its expertise questions asks whether content gives background about the author or the site, for example through links to an author page or "a site's About page" (official guidance, people-first content, page dated 2026-10-05, EN-09, M1-09). The same page warns that inventing creator profiles, such as AI-generated headshots, made-up names or false credentials, is deception and makes a page untrustworthy (EN-09). Google does not call About pages, bylines or author markup ranking factors (M1-09, M1-10).

Step 1: write the fact sheet before the page

Before you design anything, write one internal document listing your company's facts. This is our method (hypothesis, EN-14). Google doesn't ask for it, but every later step copies from it, and that is how the facts stay consistent.

Fact	Write it as	Notes
Name	The exact form used on your home page and in your site name	Google's Organization docs say to use the same name and alternateName as your site name (EN-01, EN-02)
Alternate names	Acronym, old name, product name if different from the company	List a former name only if people still search for it
Legal name	As registered	Only if it differs from the trading name
One-sentence description	What you make and for whom, in plain words	No superlatives. Raters are told to discount self-praise (EN-11)
Founding date and founders	Year, names	Real people only. Google calls invented creator profiles deception (EN-09)
Location	Registered or mailing address, country	Use the real address. A SaaS company without in-person customers isn't eligible for a Business Profile (N11-01), so this goes in Organization markup, not on Maps
Contact	Support email, sales contact, phone if you staff one	The rater guidelines expect more for sites that handle accounts and payments (EN-10)
Identifiers	VAT ID, LEI, D-U-N-S, company registry number	Google's Organization docs support several of these (EN-01)
Official profiles	Only accounts you control	These become your sameAs list
Logo	One canonical file URL	At least 112×112 px, crawlable, and legible on white (EN-01)

Give the fact sheet an owner and a review date. When something changes, such as a rename, a move, a new founder or a new logo, update the sheet first and every copy from it.

Step 2: build the page

What the About page needs to contain (our method, hypothesis, drawn from the rater sections and the people-first questions above):

• A first paragraph that answers "what is this company?" Use the name, the one-sentence description, the year founded and the location. For an invented example: "Example Analytics is a product-analytics tool for B2B SaaS teams, founded in 2021 and based in Lisbon." Avoid lines like "We're on a mission to reimagine data."
• The people. Founders and key staff with real names, roles and a short, checkable background. Link each to a profile they control. If someone prefers not to be named, leave them out. Don't invent a persona to fill the gap (EN-09).
• What the product does and doesn't do. Two or three lines, linking to the product and pricing pages. This is also where you separate yourself from a similarly named company: "Not affiliated with the Example open-source library."
• Contact and accountability. Support and sales contacts, the registered address and legal entity, and links to your terms, privacy policy and security or status pages. Under section 4.5.1, a product with logins and payments should not make people hunt for these (EN-10).
• Independent references. Link to coverage, analyst mentions, marketplace listings or customer case studies that exist outside your site. Only list what really exists. Don't present a paid placement as earned coverage, and label any sponsorship as sponsored.
• Official profiles. A short "Find us on" list matching your sameAs list exactly.
• A visible "last reviewed" date, changed only when the facts change.

Make the page easy to reach: link it from the main navigation or footer on every page, keep it crawlable and indexable, and don't block it in robots.txt. These are ordinary indexing requirements. The Organization docs also say the page must be accessible to Google (EN-01).

Step 3: add Organization and WebSite markup

Where it goes. Google recommends putting Organization markup on the home page or on one page that describes the organization, "for example the about us page", and says it does not need to be on every page (official guidance, EN-01). Choose one place. The home page keeps it next to the WebSite markup; the About page works just as well.

Which properties. There are no required properties. Google suggests including the ones useful to users, such as name, a sign of real-world presence (address, telephone) and online presence (url, logo) (EN-01). For SaaS, that usually means name, alternateName, legalName, url, logo, description, foundingDate, address, contactPoint, sameAs and any identifiers you actually have (vatID, iso6523Code, taxID). Use the most specific Organization subtype that fits (EN-01). Use a LocalBusiness subtype only if you really serve customers at a location.

Site name. Google's site-name system reads WebSite structured data on the home page (name, url, optional alternateName) and supports only one site name per domain or subdomain (official guidance, site names, page dated 2025-12-10, EN-02). Keep it identical to the Organization name, as the Organization docs require.

Rules that apply to both. The markup must describe content that is visible on the page, must not be misleading, and must not impersonate anyone (official guidance, structured data general guidelines, page dated 2026-07-10, EN-03). If you break the guidelines, Google may take a manual action, and markup under a structured data manual action is ignored (EN-01). Practically, every fact in your JSON-LD should also appear in the visible text.

A minimal sketch for an invented company (copy the pattern, not the values):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#organization",
  "name": "Example Analytics",
  "alternateName": "ExampleA",
  "legalName": "Example Analytics, Lda.",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/logo-512.png",
  "description": "Product analytics for B2B SaaS teams.",
  "foundingDate": "2021",
  "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "addressLocality": "Lisbon", "addressCountry": "PT" },
  "contactPoint": { "@type": "ContactPoint", "contactType": "customer support", "email": "support@example.com" },
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/example-analytics",
    "https://github.com/example-analytics"
  ]
}

The @id is a general JSON-LD convention that lets your Article and Person markup point at the same organization node. Google's Organization page doesn't mention it. Chapter 8 of the book and the JSON-LD templates lesson have the Organization, Person and Article templates this fits into.

Step 4: get sameAs right

Schema.org defines sameAs as the URL of a reference page that "unambiguously indicates the item's identity", and gives a Wikipedia page, a Wikidata entry or an official website as examples (official guidance, schema.org/sameAs, EN-04). Google describes it as a page on another website with more information about your organization, such as a social media or review-site profile, and says you can list several (official guidance, EN-01).

Our rules (hypothesis, EN-14):

1. Only pages about you. List your own profiles and listings: LinkedIn company page, GitHub organization, app marketplace listing, review-site profile, Crunchbase entry, Wikidata item if one exists. Never list a page about a different company with a similar name, a press article (link those visibly instead), or a profile you can't edit or verify.
2. Pages that exist and resolve. Check every URL returns 200 and shows your name, logo and description the same way the fact sheet does.
3. Point both ways where you can. Each profile should link to your website. Linking between accounts you own is normal. Google's link spam policy targets links made to manipulate rankings, such as excessive link exchanges (AG-03). It doesn't cover a company linking its own profiles. Some practitioners argue that the two-way links themselves help corroboration. That is unverified (hypothesis).
4. No padding. Practitioner advice sometimes names a target number of sameAs profiles. We found no primary source for any number. Creating thin profiles to make the list longer adds pages you have to maintain and that nobody reads.

Step 5: knowledge panels: claim, don't chase

What Google documents (official guidance, Knowledge Panel Help, retrieved 2026-10-06, no page dates, EN-05 to EN-08):

• Knowledge panels appear for entities in Google's Knowledge Graph. They are generated automatically from sources across the web, sometimes combined with licensed data, and are updated automatically as that information changes.
• Google's systems decide when a panel appears or disappears, based on relevance to the query. The help pages say Google doesn't create or delete panels manually, and a panel that stops showing isn't something Google will intervene on.
• If a panel exists and you officially represent the entity, you can claim it: search for it, choose "Claim this knowledge panel" and sign in to one of the official sites or profiles Google lists. The list includes Search Console and YouTube, along with some social accounts. Not every panel can be claimed yet.
• Once verified, you can suggest edits with supporting public URLs. Google says it reviews verified feedback within a few days and can make some corrections directly, such as social profile links. It cannot add an image to a panel that has none, does not accept custom subtitles, and changes titles only with substantial evidence. Verified accounts can add other users as owners, managers or contributors.
• Anyone can send feedback through the panel's Feedback link. Business Profiles look similar but are a separate product for businesses with a location or service area.

So the method: if you have a panel, claim it with the Search Console account that already verifies your site, give the verified account to more than one person on the team, and fix factual errors with links to your About page and independent sources. If you don't have a panel, there is no form to request one. The documented route is that information about you has to exist across the web. That means the work of Steps 1–4 plus real independent coverage, with no promised result.

Step 6: Wikidata, only if you are notable

Wikidata's notability policy accepts an item if it meets at least one of three criteria: it has a valid sitelink to a Wikimedia project page such as a Wikipedia article; it refers to a clearly identifiable entity that can be described using "serious and publicly available references"; or it meets a structural need for other items (official guidance, Wikidata:Notability, retrieved 2026-10-06, EN-12). The policy calls itself intentionally vague, leaves disputes to the community through deletion requests, and notes a reform discussion is ongoing.

For a SaaS company, the second criterion is the one that matters, and it depends on the references, not on your own site. Our method (hypothesis, EN-14):

• Check whether an item already exists. If it does, correct errors with cited sources rather than starting a duplicate.
• Add or edit an item only when you can cite independent, published sources: press coverage, registry entries, analyst reports. Your own About page can support basic facts but not notability.
• Make every statement match the fact sheet, and add the Wikidata URL to sameAs once the item is stable.
• Don't create items for each product, founder and feature to build a graph. That runs straight into the notability test and gives the community a reason to delete.

Wikipedia has its own, stricter notability and conflict-of-interest rules, which we haven't checked for this article. Read them in full before anyone connected to the company edits there.

Testing whether any of this changes AI answers

There is no published study showing that an About page, Organization markup or a Wikidata item changes how AI assistants describe a company (EN-13). If you want evidence for your own brand, run a test. The protocol below is our method (hypothesis, EN-13). Be clear about what it can show.

1. Fix a prompt panel. Write 10–20 prompts a buyer might use: "What is Example Analytics?", "Example Analytics vs [competitor]", "who makes [your category] tools for B2B SaaS". Include prompts where the name is ambiguous.
2. Run each prompt several times per assistant and record whether you are named, whether the description is correct, which URLs are cited and whether the assistant confuses you with another entity. A published study found the same AI brand list almost never came back twice, so single runs prove nothing (research finding, RQ1-10).
3. Baseline for at least two to four weeks before changing anything, so you know the normal run-to-run spread.
4. Change one thing at a time (the page, then markup, then profiles) and log the dates.
5. Keep a control. Track a few similar companies, or prompts unrelated to your change, over the same period. If their answers shift too, the cause is probably a model or index update, not your edit.

A before/after change on its own doesn't show causation. Assistants change models and retrieval often, and you can't see when. The most this test can support is "answers became more accurate after the change, beyond the spread we saw at baseline and in the control". Keep mentions, linked citations, referral sessions and signups as separate numbers.

For Google, Search Console is the first-party source. Watch impressions and clicks for branded queries in the Performance report, and remember that query filters drop anonymized queries, so branded totals are approximations (official guidance, M1-15, M1-16).

Checklist

#	Item	Done when	Basis
1	Fact sheet	One owned document with name, alternates, legal name, description, founding, people, address, contacts, identifiers, profiles, logo; review date set	Our method (hypothesis, EN-14)
2	Name consistency	Organization name, WebSite name, home page and About page use the identical name	Official guidance (EN-01, EN-02)
3	About page opening	First paragraph says what the company is, for whom, when founded, where	Rater guidelines 2.5.2 (EN-10); our method
4	Real people	Named founders and staff with checkable backgrounds; no invented personas or AI headshots	Official guidance (EN-09)
5	Contact and accountability	Support and sales contacts, legal entity, address, terms, privacy, security/status links	Rater guidelines 2.5.3, 4.5.1 (EN-10)
6	Disambiguation line	Says what you are not, if a similarly named entity exists	Our method (hypothesis)
7	Independent references	Links to real coverage and listings; sponsored items labeled	Rater guidelines 3.3.1 (EN-11); FTC disclosure (M1-29)
8	Reachability	Linked sitewide, indexable, not blocked	Official guidance (EN-01)
9	Organization markup	On home or About page, one place, most specific subtype, only visible facts	Official guidance (EN-01, EN-03)
10	Logo	≥112×112 px, crawlable, indexable, legible on white	Official guidance (EN-01)
11	WebSite markup	On the home page; one site name per domain; alternateName if useful	Official guidance (EN-02)
12	sameAs	Only profiles about you, all resolving, each matching the fact sheet; no padding	Official guidance (EN-01, EN-04); our rules (hypothesis)
13	Profiles link back	Each profile links to your site	Our method (hypothesis); within link spam policy (AG-03)
14	Validation	Rich Results Test passes; URL Inspection shows the rendered markup	Official guidance (EN-01)
15	Knowledge panel	Claimed if one exists, verified account shared with a second person, errors fixed with public URLs	Official guidance (EN-05 to EN-08)
16	Wikidata	Only with independent references; existing item corrected rather than duplicated	Official guidance (EN-12); our method
17	AI-answer panel	Baseline, one change at a time, control, repeated runs	Hypothesis test (EN-13, RQ1-10)
18	Review	Fact sheet and page reviewed quarterly and after any rename, move or rebrand	Our method (hypothesis)

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on this, RankPropel's audit and baseline sprint can include the entity page and the AI-answer baseline. The method is the same if you run it yourself.

Sources

Google Search Central: Organization structured data (page dated 2026-09-08), site names (2025-12-10), general structured data guidelines (2026-07-10), creating helpful, people-first content (2026-10-05), optimizing for generative AI search, AI features and your website, spam policies. Google Knowledge Panel Help: about knowledge panels, get verified on Google, submit feedback on content about you, how Google's Knowledge Graph works. Google, Search Quality Rater Guidelines (version dated 2025-09-11; sections 2.5.2, 2.5.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.3, 4.5.1). Schema.org: sameAs. Wikidata: Notability policy. SparkToro, AI brand-recommendation consistency study (published 2026-01-28). All retrieved 2026-10-06.