Entity Linking
Entity linking is the step where software finds a name in a piece of text and matches it to the right entry in a knowledge base, such as a Wikipedia page. Microsoft's own example is the sentence "We went to Seattle last week." The word Seattle gets picked out and linked to more information about the city on Wikipedia.
Source: Microsoft Learn, What is entity linking in Azure Language?, checked October 29, 2026
What Entity Linking means for your business
For a business, entity linking is the moment a tool reads your name and has to decide which business you are. If you share a name with a bigger company, a town or a product, the match can land on the wrong entry, or on nothing at all. None of the AI companies we've read explain how their own tools make this match, so read this as the research meaning, not a description of ChatGPT or Google.
Some SEO articles use the phrase for a different job: adding links and schema code that point from your pages to your official profiles or your Wikipedia entry. We'd still do that work, because it gives the matching more to go on. The term itself still means the matching step.
What we'd check is whether your name ever appears without the details that set you apart. Your trade, your town and the people behind the business should sit close to your name on your site, your profiles and the pages that write about you. If AI answers keep pinning your name on a different company, putting the right details next to your name is how we'd tackle it.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview gave the research meaning and cited university and conference papers, plus one SEO trade article about linking brand pages to profiles. ChatGPT gave the same meaning with a worked example and cited no sources.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
Related terms in entities and the knowledge graph
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