What is sameAs Schema and How to Add It to Your Website

What is sameAs Schema?

sameAs is a Schema.org property used in structured data. It connects the entity described on your website—usually a business, organization, or person—to URLs that identify that same entity elsewhere online.

Schema.org defines sameAs as the URL of a reference page that unambiguously indicates an item’s identity. Its examples include an official website, Wikipedia page, and Wikidata entry.

For a small business, it effectively tells a search engine:

This business on our website is the same business represented by these profiles and listings.

Here is a simplified example:

{
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Lakeview Heating & Cooling",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/lakeviewheating",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/lakeviewheating",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@lakeviewheating"
  ]
}

Website visitors normally do not see this code. Search engines and other systems can read it in the page’s HTML.

Despite the common phrase “sameAs schema,” sameAs is technically a property placed inside a larger schema entity. It is not a standalone schema type.

Add sameAs to your existing Organization, LocalBusiness, or Person structured data. Use only accurate URLs that clearly identify the same entity. Do not use articles, guest posts, customers, business partners, or loosely related pages.

Correct sameAs markup can help search engines connect your website with your broader online presence. It does not guarantee higher rankings, a Knowledge Panel, or rich results.

Why is sameAs Schema Needed?

Your business may appear under several URLs:

• Your official website
• Your Google Business Profile
• Social media profiles
• Business and professional directories
• Industry association profiles
• Government or licensing databases
• Wikipedia or Wikidata, when applicable

A person can recognize that these profiles describe the same company. A search engine may need more help, especially when the business has a common name, has moved, uses a shortened name, or shares its name with another organization.

The sameAs property supplies an explicit connection between those identities.

Google says it can make general use of sameAs and other Schema.org structured data. Google also recommends accurate, complete information instead of adding every possible property with weak or incorrect data. See its introduction to structured data.

What sameAs can help with

Properly implemented sameAs schema can help search engines:

• Connect your website with official profiles belonging to your business
• Distinguish your company from businesses with similar names
• Build a clearer understanding of your business as an entity
• Reconcile consistent information found across multiple sources
• Understand the relationship between an author and that person’s external profiles

This makes sameAs useful for local companies, consultants, professional practices, authors, and personal brands.

What sameAs cannot do

Adding sameAs does not automatically:

• Improve your search rankings
• Create a Google Knowledge Panel
• Add social icons to your search result
• Make an untrustworthy profile authoritative
• Correct inconsistent business information across the web
• Replace a complete Google Business Profile or sound local SEO work

Think of it as a clarification signal, not a ranking shortcut.

Which Schema Type Should Contain sameAs?

Add sameAs to the entity that the external URLs identify.

LocalBusiness

Most companies serving a local area should use LocalBusiness or a more specific subtype, such as:

• Dentist
• Electrician
• HVACBusiness
• LegalService
• RealEstateAgent
• Restaurant
• Store

Use the most accurate subtype available. If there is no suitable subtype, use LocalBusiness.

Organization

Use Organization for a company that is not primarily a local, customer-facing business. Examples include a national company, membership organization, manufacturer, or online company.

Google recommends using the most specific applicable subtype and placing organization information on the home page or a single page describing the organization. It does not have to appear on every page. See Google’s Organization structured data documentation.

Person

Use Person when the links identify an individual rather than a company. This often belongs on:

• An author page
• An employee biography
• A consultant’s website
• An About page for a personal brand
• A professional profile page

Keep business and personal identities separate. A company’s sameAs list should contain company profiles. A person’s list should contain that person’s profiles.

Which URLs Should You Include?

Include a URL only when it clearly represents the same business or person.

Good candidates may include:

• Official Facebook business page
• Official LinkedIn company page
• Official Instagram account
• Official YouTube channel
• Official TikTok, Pinterest, or other active social profile
• Better Business Bureau business profile
• Chamber of commerce member page
• Relevant professional or industry directory profile
• State licensing or business registration page
• Wikidata entry
• Wikipedia page
• An official profile on a recognized marketplace or platform

For a person, appropriate URLs might include an official LinkedIn profile, professional association biography, author profile, Wikidata entry, or personal website.

A page does not need to be a social media profile. The important test is whether it unambiguously identifies the entity.

What not to include

Do not add a URL just because it mentions, links to, or supports your business.

Usually, you should exclude:

• News articles about your company
• Guest articles written by an employee
• Press releases
• Customer websites
• Vendor and business partner websites
• Pages for companies you own but that have separate identities
• Individual employee profiles from the company’s sameAs list
• Search result pages
• Category and tag pages
• Inactive or abandoned profiles
• Profiles you do not control and cannot confirm
• Listings for a different location or similarly named business
• URLs containing tracking parameters

For example, a newspaper article about your business is not the same entity as your business. It may be relevant evidence or a citation, but it is generally not an appropriate sameAs URL.

How to Add sameAs Schema

JSON-LD is usually the easiest format to implement and maintain. Google recommends it in most situations because it is less prone to implementation errors.

Before adding new code, check whether your website or SEO plugin already generates structured data. Adding a second, disconnected description of the same business can create duplicate entities.

Step 1: Decide which entity you are describing

Choose the most accurate schema type:

• A local business: LocalBusiness or a specific subtype
• A nonlocal company: Organization
• An individual: Person

Do not select Person simply because the owner is important to the business. The owner and the company are two separate entities.

Step 2: Gather your official profile URLs

Create a short list of profiles that clearly belong to the entity.

Open every URL and verify:

• The page is public
• The profile represents the correct business or person
• The business name and details are current
• The URL loads without requiring a login
• The page is not a redirect to an unrelated location
• You are using the final, clean URL without tracking parameters

Quality matters more than quantity. Five accurate profiles are better than 30 questionable ones.

Step 3: Add sameAs to your existing schema

If your site already has an Organization or LocalBusiness entity, add the property to that entity instead of creating another one.

Here is a basic local business example:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#business",
  "name": "Lakeview Heating & Cooling",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "telephone": "+1-555-555-0123",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/lakeviewheating",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/lakeviewheating",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@lakeviewheating"
  ]
}
</script>

Replace every example value with the company’s real information.

If you already have a larger schema block containing the company’s address, hours, logo, and other details, add only the following property in the appropriate place:

"sameAs": [
  "https://www.facebook.com/yourbusiness",
  "https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourbusiness",
  "https://www.youtube.com/@yourbusiness"
]

Remember to place a comma before or after the property when other properties are beside it.

Step 4: Add sameAs for a person when appropriate

A person’s profiles belong inside a Person entity:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/about-jane-smith/#person",
  "name": "Jane Smith",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/about-jane-smith/",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janesmith",
    "https://example-professional-association.org/members/jane-smith"
  ]
}
</script>

If the person writes articles, the article schema can refer to the same entity using its @id:

"author": {
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/about-jane-smith/#person"
}

Using the same @id helps prevent the website from describing Jane as several disconnected people.

Google also supports sameAs within the main Person or Organization entity on appropriate profile pages. Its ProfilePage documentation includes implementation examples.

Step 5: Add it to the right page

For a business, add the complete organization or local business entity to:

• The home page, or
• A dedicated About or company information page

You generally do not need to paste the same full block independently onto every page.

For a person, add the Person entity to that individual’s author, biography, or About page. Articles can then reference the person by @id.

Step 6: Publish the code

Common implementation options include:

• Your SEO or schema plugin
• Your website platform’s structured-data settings
• A custom field or code-injection feature
• Your theme or template
• A tag-management system
• Direct development work

Use the system already responsible for the site’s schema whenever possible. That makes it easier to keep the information connected and avoid duplication.

How to Test Your Markup

Test the published page, not only the code before publication.

Use the Schema.org validator

Enter the page URL in the Schema Markup Validator. It can extract JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa and identify syntax errors.

Find the relevant Organization, LocalBusiness, or Person entity and confirm that:

• sameAs appears inside the correct entity
• Every intended URL appears
• The URLs are spelled correctly
• There are no JSON syntax errors
• The entity type is correct
• The markup does not create unintended duplicate businesses or people

Use Google’s Rich Results Test

You can also use Google’s Rich Results Test. It is useful for checking structured data that Google uses for supported search features.

However, sameAs by itself is not a rich-result type. A page may have valid sameAs markup even if the tool does not show a special enhancement for that property. Use the Schema Markup Validator for a broader examination of Schema.org markup.

Check what is actually published

After testing, view the page source and search for sameAs. Confirm that the live page contains the expected URLs.

If the code is missing:

• Clear all caches
• Check whether the plugin feature is enabled
• Make sure you tested the correct page
• Check whether another plugin or theme is replacing the schema
• Confirm that the website is not serving a stale cached version

sameAs Schema Best Practices

Use exact, canonical URLs

Link directly to the official profile. Avoid shortened links, redirects, mobile URLs, share URLs, and tracking parameters.

Use:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/example-business/

Avoid:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/example-business/?trackingId=12345

Keep your business information consistent

The business name, website, phone number, address, and branding should be reasonably consistent across the profiles you identify.

sameAs cannot repair contradictory information. Update the profiles themselves when they contain old addresses, previous names, incorrect phone numbers, or obsolete websites.

Separate people from organizations

A founder is related to a company but is not the same entity as the company.

Put the company’s profiles in the company entity. Put the founder’s profiles in the founder’s Person entity. Other schema properties can describe the relationship between them.

Do not use sameAs as a backlink list

sameAs is about identity, not link building. More URLs do not make the markup more powerful.

Every URL should pass this test:

If someone opened this page, would it be unmistakably clear that it represents the same business or person?

If the answer is no, leave it out.

Do not create profiles solely to fill the list

An empty or abandoned social profile provides little value to customers and may make the business’s online presence look neglected.

List the profiles the business genuinely uses or maintains.

Use one stable @id for each entity

An @id gives the entity a stable identifier inside the site’s structured-data graph. A useful convention is:

https://www.example.com/#organization

or:

https://www.example.com/#localbusiness

Use the same identifier whenever another piece of schema refers to that entity. Do not assign the same @id to both the business and its owner.

Update the markup when profiles change

Review the list when you:

• Rename the business
• Change domains
• Move to a new social media account
• Close an old profile
• Merge locations
• Change an author’s biography URL
• Adopt a new schema or SEO plugin

Broken, redirected, or outdated URLs weaken the clarity you are trying to create.

Keep the claims truthful

Structured data should accurately describe the content and entity represented on the page. Never claim an unrelated high-authority profile, listing, or Wikipedia entry as the same business.

Common sameAs Schema Mistakes

Putting sameAs outside an entity

This property must belong to an entity such as Organization, LocalBusiness, or Person. A loose list of URLs without a defined entity lacks the necessary context.

Adding articles and press mentions

An article about your company is not identical to your company. Do not turn sameAs into a list of publicity links.

Mixing personal and company profiles

A company’s Facebook page and its owner’s LinkedIn profile describe different entities. Create separate company and person markup when both are needed.

Creating duplicate Organization entities

Multiple plugins may each generate an Organization object. This can leave search engines with several versions of the business, different @id values, or conflicting information.

Inspect the entire page before adding another block.

Using invalid JSON

Frequent errors include:

• Smart or curly quotation marks
• Missing commas
• An extra comma after the final URL
• Unescaped quotation marks
• Comments inside JSON
• Missing brackets

Valid JSON uses straight quotation marks and does not permit comments.

Expecting an immediate ranking change

Structured data helps machines understand information; it does not force them to trust or display it. Search visibility still depends on the website, its content, local relevance, reputation, links, reviews, and many other factors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is sameAs schema a ranking factor?

Google does not document sameAs as a direct ranking factor. Its practical purpose is to clarify identity and connect information about an entity. Do not promise a rankings increase from adding it.

Does sameAs create a rich result?

Not by itself. It is a property used within structured data, not a standalone rich-result feature.

Should I add my Google Business Profile URL?

A Google Business Profile can be useful for confirming a local business’s online presence, but implementation tools do not all handle its URLs consistently. If you include it, use the business’s direct public profile or Maps URL—not a management, search, or tracking URL—and verify that it resolves clearly to the correct listing.

More importantly, make sure the website URL entered in the Google Business Profile points back to the correct official site.

Can I add review-site profiles?

Yes, when the page is specifically the business’s profile and clearly identifies it. Do not add a category page, search page, individual review, or unrelated listing.

How many sameAs URLs should I use?

There is no magic number. Include the strongest, clearest profiles that genuinely represent the entity. A short, accurate list is better than a long list filled with weak or questionable URLs.

Should sameAs appear on every page?

Usually not. Google recommends placing organization information on the home page or a single page that describes the organization. Other structured data can refer to that entity by its stable @id.

Your website’s schema system may output a connected version sitewide, which is also acceptable when implemented consistently.

Can a person and a business both have sameAs markup?

Yes. Create separate Person and Organization or LocalBusiness entities. Give each a distinct @id and its own appropriate URLs.

The Bottom Line

sameAs schema gives search engines a direct way to connect your website with the external profiles that represent the same business or person.

The implementation is simple, but accuracy matters:

1. Identify the correct business or person entity.
2. Select only URLs that clearly represent that same entity.
3. Add them to the entity’s existing structured data.
4. Keep people and companies separate.
5. Validate the published markup.
6. Update it when your online profiles change.

Done correctly, sameAs makes your structured data clearer and your online identity easier for search engines to understand. That is the real benefit—without inflated promises about rankings or search features.

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