sameAs

sameAs is a Schema.org property that declares two or more online profiles refer to the same real-world entity. Attached to a business's LocalBusiness schema, it's a short list of URLs pointing to every other verified profile that business, telling any system reading the markup: this GBP, this Practo page, this Facebook page, and this LinkedIn page are all the same clinic, not four separate businesses that happen to share a name.

The markup itself

{
  "@type": "MedicalClinic",
  "name": "Sharma Skin Clinic",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.google.com/maps?cid=12345",
    "https://www.practo.com/bengaluru/clinic/sharma-skin-clinic",
    "https://www.facebook.com/SharmaSkinclinic",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/sharma-skin-clinic"
  ]
}

Nothing about the markup is complicated — it's just an array of URLs. The value is entirely in what those URLs let a system infer without having to guess.

Why sameAs matters for entity understanding

Without sameAs, an AI system or a search engine's knowledge graph has to infer, from context clues alone, whether "Sharma Skin Clinic" on Google Maps and "Sharma Skin Clinic Bengaluru" on Practo are the same business or two different ones that happen to share a name — which is a common occurrence in India, where clinic and shop names repeat heavily across cities. That inference sometimes fails, and a failed inference means the entity's data stays fragmented across profiles instead of consolidating into one coherent picture.

With sameAs declared, the equivalence is stated outright rather than inferred. Google's Knowledge Graph reads these declarations and merges entity data pulled from every linked source into a single, richer profile — which is exactly the mechanism behind entity disambiguation, the broader problem of telling apart entities that share a name or that are scattered across multiple online identities.

What belongs in a sameAs list

The GBP profile URL belongs first, since it's usually the anchor identity for a local business. The primary vertical directory relevant to the business — Practo for healthcare, Zomato for restaurants, 99acres for real estate, JustDial across most categories — comes next. A verified Facebook Business Page and LinkedIn Company Page round out the standard set. Where they exist and are genuinely maintained, a Wikipedia page and a Wikidata entry are worth including too, since both carry outsized authority in how Google's Knowledge Graph weighs a sameAs declaration.

What to leave out

Unclaimed, outdated, or simply inaccurate profiles should never make the list — a sameAs link to a stale directory listing with the wrong address does more harm than including nothing at all, since it associates the business's verified identity with information that's actively wrong. Low-quality or spam directories are worth skipping too; they add no authority and occasionally attract exactly the kind of scrutiny a business doesn't want on its entity profile. Personal social media accounts, even an owner's own well-followed profile, don't belong here either — sameAs is for business entities, not for the people who happen to run them.

India context

For an Indian healthcare business, a typical, well-built sameAs list runs through the GBP URL, the Practo clinic page, a Lybrate profile if one exists, the JustDial listing, the Facebook business page, and in some cases an Indian Medical Association directory listing where the practitioner is a member. Each entry has to actually be accurate and current — a sameAs link pointing to a Practo page still showing an address the clinic moved out of two years ago is worse than not linking Practo at all.

A worked example

A multi-location diagnostics chain in Chennai had five branches, each with its own GBP, but only two of the five had sameAs links pointing to the chain's shared Facebook page and its main website. The other three sat as disconnected entities in Google's eyes, with no declared relationship to the parent brand. Adding consistent sameAs links across all five branches, pointing to the same shared brand-level profiles, gave Google's Knowledge Graph a clear signal that all five were part of one entity — which fed directly into the entity authority component of each location's Rank OS score.

Related terms: LocalBusiness schema → · Entity SEO → · Knowledge graph → · Entity disambiguation → · Wikidata → · Entity authority →

Structured Data & Schema → | GBP Management Services → | Rank OS in the product →