Retrievability and UX · Branch R.D, Semantic UI and structured data
R-15 Organization, ProfilePage and sameAs must represent the real entity identity
Organization, Person and ProfilePage markup must be applied to the correct entity and page purpose. sameAs must only point to official or trustworthy identity URLs of the same entity.
- Scope
- All public content
- Priority
- Optimisation.
- Quality bucket
- Retrievability and UX
- Legacy coverage
- SEO-49, GEO-44, GEO-45
Why it matters
If identity markup points at the wrong entity or at unrelated profiles, search engines and AI answer engines can mix up who a business or author really is. Google's documentation on Organization and ProfilePage data expects the markup to describe the real entity and page. Invented details or loose sameAs links weaken the identity signals that these systems use to connect a brand to its profiles.
How to implement
- Choose the most specific correct Organization subtype and use a stable @id.
- Use ProfilePage plus Person on author pages, based on what is visibly shown.
- Align name, url, logo and sameAs with the real information on the site.
- Keep only official profiles in sameAs and remove duplicate, dead or third-party URLs.
- Remove any invented award, employee, address or rating.
- Reuse the same @id across pages for one entity and set out old and new identities clearly after a rebrand.
Checklist
- Use the most specific correct Organization subtype.
- Use ProfilePage plus Person on author pages.
- Use sameAs only for real official profiles.
- Choose the most accurate Organization subtype.
- Use a stable @id.
- Keep details such as name, url, logo and sameAs consistent with the real visible site information.
- Do not add invented awards, employees, addresses or ratings.
- Consider linking the markup for a single entity across different pages with the same @id.
- List the official LinkedIn, YouTube and real social profiles.
- Remove duplicate or dead profile URLs.
- Do not use a third-party blog post, a client site or a random directory as sameAs.
- When a brand changes, manage the relationship between the old and new identity explicitly.
How to audit
- Run a schema validator.
- Compare visible content with JSON-LD for parity.
- Check that every sameAs URL is genuinely an official or authoritative profile of the same entity.
How UltimateSEO checks this automatically
Partly automated. The crawler checks that Organization or WebSite schema exists with sameAs links pointing to real profile URLs; ownership of those profiles is confirmed by the business. 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.