Linked Data
Linked data is a way of putting data on the web so people and software can follow links from one fact to the next. Tim Berners-Lee, the web's inventor, set out four rules in 2006: name things with web addresses, use addresses anyone can look up, return useful facts when someone looks one up, and link to other addresses.
Source: Tim Berners-Lee, Linked Data (W3C Design Issues), checked October 29, 2026
What Linked Data means for your business
Libraries, governments and data teams do most of the talking about it. You won't build a linked data project, but two pieces of it reach your website.
The first is Wikidata, the free database of facts that Wikipedia uses. Every item there gets an ID with its own web address, which is the first rule in action. The second is the schema code on your site. It can give your business an ID and list the web addresses of your official profiles, which is the fourth rule: link to other addresses about the same thing.
We'd use those two pieces and skip the rest, so anyone, or any software, that lands on one page about your business can find the others. If someone lands on your Facebook page and can't get from there to your website, or the two give different details, connecting the pages that describe you is the job we'd take on.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited Wikipedia, library guides, a Reddit thread, YouTube and a European data portal, and credited Berners-Lee. ChatGPT cited nothing and gave four principles of its own that don't match the four rules in his note.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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