AI interfaces have transformed how people discover and engage with brands online. Instead of clicking through multiple links, users now see summarized answers from several sources combined into a single AI-generated result. Although this shift has led to declines in traditional SEO metrics like click-through rates, it has also created a new kind of opportunity for brands that prioritize visibility and authority.
Even if users don’t click through to your site, being featured within an AI-generated response signals credibility, expertise, and relevance. When your brand appears as a trusted source in these summaries, it shapes how users perceive your authority and builds awareness at scale.
By adopting an Entity SEO strategy, brands can help AI systems understand who they are, what they offer, and why they’re authoritative. This approach turns AI search from a challenge into an advantage, helping your brand show up, stand out, and stay trusted in an evolving search landscape.
Building Brand Awareness in a Zero-Click World
Zero-click searches may look like a lost opportunity, but they present a chance to strengthen brand visibility. When your brand is cited or featured in an AI Overview, it builds awareness and authority even when users don’t click.
These AI-generated mentions bring your brand into consideration earlier in the buyer journey, even during general or informational searches. In this new landscape, SEO and brand awareness are inseparable: success depends on making your brand known not just by name, but by topic.
How Does Entity SEO Fuel Brand Authority?
Entity SEO goes beyond keywords. It defines who your brand is, what it stands for, and how it connects to key topics through connected structured data. By implementing Entity SEO, you help search engines and AI systems understand the relationships between your content, products, and expertise.
This clarity strengthens your Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT)—signals that determine how search and AI systems recognize and rank your brand.
To put Entity SEO into action, brands use Schema Markup to translate their content into structured data that machines can understand. Schema Markup helps define the entities on a page —such as your organization, products, services, people, and locations —and links them to recognized concepts in the broader Knowledge Graph. This connected, structured data enables AI systems to accurately interpret your content and associate it with the topics and entities you want to be known for.
Google reinforced this point once again at Search Central Live Dubai on October 20, 2025, where a major takeaway was that structured data is foundational to modern SEO. As search evolves toward AI-generated and entity-based understanding, structured data has become essential for brands that want to be recognized, trusted, and surfaced in meaningful ways.
Example: Building Credibility Through Entity SEO
Imagine an eCommerce brand that sells car parts and accessories. When someone searches “how to replace your filter in your Bronco,” their how-to article could appear in AI Overviews because the content is semantically connected to entities like “Ford Bronco” and “car filter.” AI systems interpret this as authoritative, contextually relevant content and surface it accordingly.
This connection is made possible through Entity Linking—the process of identifying key concepts or “entities” within your content and linking them to recognized sources such as Wikidata, Wikipedia, Google’s Knowledge Graph, or even your organization’s own knowledge graph. These links help search and AI systems understand exactly which entity you’re referring to. For example, linking “Bronco” to the Ford Bronco SUV instead of the Bronco horse disambiguates meaning and ensures your content is correctly interpreted.
The visual example below illustrates how entity linking clarifies relationships between a blog topic (e.g., “how to replace your filter in your Bronco”) and connected entities like “Ford Bronco” and “car filter.”
Through Schema Markup, these relationships are represented as structured data that defines how each entity connects to the others. In this example, “Ford Bronco” and “car filter” are marked up as related entities, reinforcing the content’s relevance and improving its ability to appear in AI-generated summaries and search results.
Even without a click, this kind of visibility builds brand recognition and credibility, helping the brand influence purchase decisions earlier in the buyer journey. At Schema App, we’ve seen that pages enriched with entity linking tend to see stronger engagement in the form of clicks, while those without it often experience declines.
Schema App’s Experience: Entity Linking Drives Authority and CTR
Google’s emphasis on structured data reinforces what we see every day: brands that invest in Entity SEO earn greater visibility and trust in AI search results.
Our customer, Brightview Senior Living, a network of senior living communities across the U.S., wanted to strengthen its local and brand visibility in an increasingly AI-driven search landscape. Competing against national directories and regional providers, Brightview needed search engines and AI systems to clearly understand how its brand, services, and locations were connected.
Through their work with Schema App, Brightview implemented an Entity Linking strategy to map key entities—such as community names, service offerings, and geographic regions—to authoritative sources like Wikidata and Google’s Knowledge Graph. This clarified Brightview’s brand context and strengthened its topical authority across both search and AI systems.
With Entity Reports and Entity Performance Analytics, Brightview saw measurable gains in entity recognition and visibility, including higher impressions and improved CTR for pages with entity linking. These results confirmed that search engines were interpreting and surfacing Brightview’s brand more accurately across both branded and non-branded queries.
In industries like healthcare and finance, where trust and authority are critical to decision-making, this kind of visibility can be the difference between a user choosing your brand or a competitor’s. In AI search environments, being featured or even cited signals credibility that influences conversions long before a click.
Leverage AI to Reach Buyers Earlier in Their Journey
AI search enables brands to show up earlier in the buyer journey, during research and exploration, rather than only when users are ready to convert.
With strong entity coverage, your brand can appear in AI results for relevant topics, building awareness and trust long before a purchase decision. Over time, your continued presence across related entities reinforces both visibility and authority.
Being cited in AI search is rarely accidental. It requires structured, precise signals. Entity SEO gives brands the ability to shape how they are represented in AI search. With tools like Schema App’s Entity Hub, you can identify missing entities, fill content gaps, and maintain control over how your brand is understood and surfaced.
Building Brand Authority in the Age of AI Search
AI search experiences are reshaping SEO—but they also redefine opportunity. Instead of resisting that change, forward-thinking brands are using Entity SEO and Schema App’s Entity Hub to work with AI systems, not against them.
By clearly defining, structuring, and optimizing your entities, you ensure your brand shows up not just in search but as a recognized expert and trusted authority in AI-driven results.
Explore Entity Hub to see how Schema App can help you strengthen your brand authority in AI search.
Andrea Badder is the Content and SEO Manager at Schema App. She specializes in SEO and develops educational resources to help marketing teams understand the value of Schema Markup and Content Knowledge Graphs for semantic search, content strategy, and AI-driven initiatives. Prior to joining Schema App, Andrea worked as a brand strategist and copywriter at a marketing agency. She is also a graduate from the University of Guelph.