Entity and trust · Branch E.B, Business and brand entity integrity
E-06 Ownership, contact details and commercial relationships must be transparent
Users must be able to understand who runs the site, how to contact them and any important commercial relationships such as affiliate or sponsor arrangements.
- Scope
- All public content
- Priority
- High priority.
- Quality bucket
- Entity and trust
- Legacy coverage
- SEO-20
Why it matters
When visitors cannot tell who is behind a site or how to reach them, trust drops and so does the chance of a sale or enquiry. Hidden affiliate or sponsor relationships make content look like independent advice when it is not. Search engines and AI answer engines look for clear signs of a real, accountable operator, and Google's guidance on helpful content and link qualification points the same way.
How to implement
- Create About and Contact pages that name the real business and give working contact routes.
- Make the footer, About, Contact and Organization schema details match each other.
- Add a clear disclosure wherever affiliate or sponsor relationships apply.
- Publish the returns, service, privacy and other policies that fit your business and link to them from the footer.
Checklist
- Provide About and Contact pages.
- Show real company or business details.
- Add affiliate and sponsor disclosure.
- Publish returns, service, privacy and other relevant policies.
How to audit
- Compare the footer, About page, Contact page and Organization schema data.
How UltimateSEO checks this automatically
Partly automated. The crawler checks that about, contact and privacy or terms pages are reachable and that a company identity line (including a UK company number pattern) appears in the footer; commercial disclosures are reviewed by a person. The crawl gives a signal; a person decides the final state with business evidence.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Sources
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.1, revised 2026-10-07. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.