AI Visibility pillar / check sameas-verified
Declared profiles exist
Whether the sameAs profile URLs in your structured data load, and whether they point back to your business.
By Shimon Carroll, Founder, SEO for AI Agents · Last updated
What this check measures
Up to six sameAs URLs from your Organization and Person markup. We load each one once (secure fetch, three-second limit, a capped read) and record whether it loads, whether it mentions your site or business name, or whether it is gone. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok block automated visits, so we do not fetch them and they never count against you.
Why it matters
Google describes sameAs as the URL of a page on another website with more information about your organization, such as a social or review profile. A sameAs URL tells search engines "this profile is us"; one that returns not found points them at nothing. Bing's guidelines ask for consistent entity naming, which a profile that names your business the same way supports.
How we score it
Measured. Only a profile that answers not found or gone (404 or 410) lowers the score, at low severity. A profile that loads but does not mention you is a note. Profiles we cannot check are never counted, and if none can be checked the finding is not scored.
Confidence-flag rules
HIGH: each status is what the profile URL returned when we loaded it.
Common mistakes
- Keeping an old profile URL after a platform renamed your handle.
- Listing a profile that belongs to a different business with a similar name.
- Listing your web designer's site as a sameAs.
How to fix it
Remove dead URLs from sameAs, replace renamed profiles with their current address, and add your website link and exact business name to each profile so it points back to you.
Primary sources
Changelog
- · New. Uses the same bounded, cached verification we use for profile links in our own recommendations, so a profile is never fetched twice in one audit.