Entity
What Entity means
An entity is a particular thing that can be identified and referred to in its own right: one person, one business, one place, one product. Google's Knowledge Graph is built from entries that describe real-world entities like people, places and things, addressed as objects rather than as strings of text.
More precisely
What makes something an entity in practice is a stable identifier, not a name. In JSON-LD that identifier is the `@id` IRI; in schema.org the `sameAs` property carries a "URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity," with Wikipedia, Wikidata and the official website given as the examples. Two records refer to the same entity when their identifiers agree, whatever their labels say.
Why it matters
Names collide. Several businesses share a name within one city, and a system that has only the string cannot tell which one a page is about; identifiers are what resolve that.
Example
A business with a common name is pinned down by pointing `sameAs` at its own domain and its Wikidata item, rather than by repeating the name more often.
Where this came from
Definitions here follow the specification or documentation that defines the term, not a paraphrase of another glossary.
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Google Knowledge Graph Search API — Google
The API "lets you find entities in the Google Knowledge Graph", which holds entries describing real-world entities such as people, places and things, typed with schema.org types.
Primary source · read 2026-09-03
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schema.org: sameAs — Schema.org
sameAs is defined as the URL of a reference web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity, naming Wikipedia, Wikidata and the official website as examples.
Primary source · read 2026-09-03