What is sameAs schema? A plain-English guide for marketers.

sameAs schema is a short list, hidden in your website's code, that tells Google and AI tools "these other pages are also us". Your LinkedIn page, your Instagram, your Wikipedia entry. It helps machines be sure which business or person your website belongs to, especially when someone else has a similar name. You do not need to write the code to own it. You need to own the list.

This is a plain-English guide for marketers who have heard the term and want to know what it is, who needs it, when to use it, and what a good one looks like. No developer vocabulary required. It expands line two of the Five-Line Schema Resume.

What is sameAs schema?

Look at the footer of almost any website. There is a row of small icons: LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube. They tell a human visitor where else to find the brand.

sameAs does the same job for machines. It is a line in a page's schema markup (structured code that describes the page) that lists your other official pages on the web. Schema.org, the shared vocabulary search engines use, defines it as a link to a reference page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity.

Put simply: your website says "this is us", and sameAs says "and so are these".

Footer icons are for visitors. sameAs is the same list, written for Google, Bing and the AI tools that read them.

What problem does sameAs solve?

Names are not unique. There are many cafés called Blue Door, many consultants called Sara Khan, many companies called Apex. A human uses context to tell them apart. A machine needs evidence.

When Google or an AI assistant builds its picture of who you are, it has to decide which LinkedIn page, which Instagram account and which news mentions belong to your website, and which belong to someone else with a similar name. sameAs removes the guesswork by stating the connections outright. Google's Organization structured data guide describes this markup as a way to help it understand an organisation and tell it apart from others.

sameAs does not tell machines you are good. It tells them which one you are.

Who is sameAs schema for?

Almost every business and personal brand with a website and at least one official profile elsewhere. It matters more for some than others:

Source: author's framework.

Large, famous brands with a Wikipedia page and a knowledge panel benefit least, because the machines already know them well. They should still do it. It costs almost nothing.

When should you use sameAs?

sameAs is not a one-time task. Add or review it whenever your official presence changes:

A worked example, line by line

Take a fictional café, Blue Door Café in Dubai Marina. There is another Blue Door Café in London. The Dubai café has a website, a LinkedIn page, an Instagram account and a claimed listing on a restaurant directory.

Here is what its sameAs markup could look like on the homepage:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "CafeOrCoffeeShop",
  "name": "Blue Door Café",
  "url": "https://www.bluedoorcafe.ae/",
  "address": "Dubai Marina, Dubai, UAE",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/bluedoorcafe-dubai",
    "https://www.instagram.com/bluedoorcafe.dubai",
    "https://www.example-directory.com/dubai/blue-door-cafe"
  ]
}

An illustrative example with a fictional business and placeholder links.

And here is what each part is saying, in plain English:

Notice what is not in the list: a newspaper review, a "best cafés in Dubai" article, the London café's Instagram. The first two are about the café, not the café itself. The third is someone else entirely.

A good sameAs list reads like a short, verified set of official accounts. Not a press cuttings file.

What to include, and what to leave out

The common advice is to add as many links as you can. I disagree. Every link in sameAs says "this page is us", so it also vouches for everything that page says. A directory listing with your old address does not add a reference. It adds a contradiction, with your name on it.

Before adding any link, I ask three questions. If the answer to any of them is no, the link stays out until the profile is fixed.

Source: author's framework. Articles about you have their own Schema.org property, subjectOf, if your developer wants to mark them up.

How do you add sameAs without writing code?

You have three routes, and none of them needs you to touch the code yourself:

Whichever route you take, paste your homepage into the free Schema Markup Validator afterwards and look for the sameAs line. If your links are there, it is live.

What sameAs will not do

sameAs is not a ranking button. It will not push you up Google or get you mentioned by ChatGPT on its own. Rankings come from the wider work of search engine optimisation (SEO). The job of sameAs is narrower: making sure that when machines do talk about you, they are talking about the right you.

The benefit is also hard to measure. You will rarely see a before-and-after chart. What you can see is the absence of a problem: AI answers that get your name, location and profiles right, instead of blending you with someone else.

Treat sameAs like your business registration details: unexciting, quick to get right, and expensive to get wrong.

Working in property? I cover sameAs alongside six other types in seven schemas every property site needs.

Frequently asked questions