Everything you need to know

In the language of AI and knowledge systems, a "known entity" is a person, organisation, or concept that AI has sufficient structured, trusted information about to reference with confidence. It is precisely the status we help our clients achieve. The name is the outcome.

We work with any organisation that wants to control how it shows up in AI-generated answers. That includes established businesses across professional services, manufacturing, property, food and drink, hospitality, health and technology. It also includes challenger brands building category authority, individuals with professional reputations to protect and develop, and organisations going through repositioning who need AI to reflect who they are now, not who they were.

What our clients share is this: they have genuine expertise, a real reputation, and a story worth telling. The gap is that AI systems do not yet know it.

We are not a generalist agency. We do not run paid advertising, manage social media, or optimise websites for traditional search rankings. Known Entity exists specifically to help organisations build credibility and visibility within AI knowledge systems.

That focus means we bring a depth of understanding to this discipline that a generalist practice adding GEO as a line item simply cannot match.

Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring and positioning an organisation's expertise, content, and online presence so that AI platforms recognise it as a credible, citable source. Where traditional SEO aimed to rank a website highly in a list of search results, GEO aims to ensure a business is present in the synthesised answer that an AI platform delivers directly to the user — often without the user clicking anywhere at all.

Answer Engine Optimisation describes the same discipline from a slightly different angle, focusing on the AI platforms themselves as the destination where answers are delivered. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude are now functioning as answer engines. AEO is the practice of ensuring your organisation features authoritatively in those answers.

The terms GEO and AEO are used interchangeably across the industry, and Known Entity works across both.

The major platforms we work across are ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude. Each behaves differently, draws on different sources, and weights credibility signals in its own way. A rigorous approach accounts for all of them rather than optimising for one at the expense of others.

Research into buyer behaviour consistently shows that people now complete the majority of their research before they contact a supplier, an advisor, or a brand. AI platforms are accelerating this significantly. When someone asks an AI which consultancy, supplier, or service provider they should consider, the businesses that appear in that answer have an enormous advantage over those that do not.

Organisations that begin building AI visibility now will compound that advantage. Those that wait will find the gap harder to close.

SEO optimises a website so that search engines rank it in a list of results. The user then chooses where to click. GEO works in a fundamentally different environment: AI platforms do not return ranked lists. They generate a direct, synthesised answer, drawing on sources they have learned to trust.

The goal shifts from appearing in results to appearing in the answer itself. The techniques overlap in some areas, but the execution — the content architecture, the citation strategy, and the brand positioning work — are substantially different.

Yes. A well-structured website, strong domain authority, and good technical foundations all feed into the signals that AI systems use to assess credibility. But SEO alone will not deliver AI visibility.

An organisation can rank on page one of Google and be entirely absent from AI-generated answers. Both disciplines matter, and they need to be coordinated rather than treated as alternatives.

Some SEO agencies are adding GEO services. The right question to ask is whether they are applying genuine methodology or simply relabelling content production. Building the entity definition, knowledge architecture, and external citation graph that AI systems rely on requires a specific approach — it is not an extension of keyword optimisation.

Known Entity focuses exclusively on this discipline, and that focus makes a meaningful difference to the quality of the work and the speed of the results.

No. One of the distinctive aspects of our approach is that we build a standalone, AI-optimised knowledge base hosted at a subdomain of your existing website. We need a single DNS record, nothing more. We do not require access to your CMS or your web agency.

This means we can begin delivering results quickly, without disruption to your existing digital infrastructure.

AI Authority is the degree to which AI platforms recognise and trust your organisation as a credible source on the topics relevant to your business or brand. An organisation with strong AI Authority is cited, referenced, and recommended in AI-generated answers. An organisation without it is absent, regardless of how well-established or respected it is in the real world.

How an organisation shows up in AI answers is not simply a technical question — it is also a brand question. AI systems form a picture of what your organisation is, what it stands for, what it is an authority on, and how it is perceived. If that picture is incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent with your current positioning, AI will present a version of you that no longer reflects who you are.

Known Entity works with clients on the strategic foundations: defining clearly what the organisation is in AI terms, what it wants to be known for, and how that positioning should be expressed consistently across every channel that AI sources from.

This is precisely when AI Authority work is most important. AI systems are drawing on historical information. Without deliberate intervention, they will continue to reflect your old positioning long after you have moved on.

Known Entity can help organisations take control of how AI presents them during and after a strategic transition, ensuring the new narrative takes hold across all major platforms.

Yes. Alongside auditing current AI visibility, we offer strategic messaging guidance to help organisations articulate their authority clearly and consistently. This covers the core narrative, the topics and questions the organisation should own, and the language that positions it most credibly within AI knowledge systems.

Strong messaging does not just serve human audiences. It provides the structured, unambiguous signals that AI needs to categorise and reference an organisation accurately.

It is built methodically rather than quickly. The foundations — a clear entity definition, a structured knowledge base, and a programme of external citation — can be established within a matter of weeks. The compounding effect, where citation frequency and share of voice grow month on month, takes longer.

Clients who begin this work now will have a meaningful advantage over competitors who leave it another year.

Our audit is a structured, documented investigation into how your organisation currently appears across all major AI platforms. It covers:

• Systematic prompting across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude, using the questions your audiences are genuinely asking
• Citation frequency: how often you appear, in what context, and with what accuracy
• Sentiment analysis: whether AI presents your organisation positively, neutrally, or in ways that need addressing
• Entity definition: what AI currently believes your organisation is, what it does, and what it stands for
• Technical accessibility: whether AI systems can properly crawl, index, and draw from your content
• Competitive positioning: how your AI presence compares to your direct and indirect competitors
• Gap analysis: where the opportunities are and where the risks lie

You receive a full written report with a clear, prioritised picture of your current AI Authority. It includes your baseline citation score, your competitive share of voice, an assessment of your entity definition, and a practical roadmap for the work that will strengthen your position.

It is designed to be genuinely useful, not just informative.

Ongoing clients receive a monthly AI Visibility Report. This tracks citation frequency, share of voice, AI referral traffic, and sentiment across all platforms — running the same structured query set each month so that movement is visible and meaningful.

You will always know what is improving, what still needs attention, and how your position is shifting relative to competitors.

Your AI Authority does not exist in isolation. AI systems form relative judgements, drawing on the breadth and depth of information available about every organisation in your category. Our competitive analysis shows you not just where you stand, but how you stand relative to the businesses and brands you are actually competing with.

This gives you a clear picture of where you have genuine authority, where competitors are currently ahead, and where there is open ground to claim.

The simplest test is to search for your company, your services, and the questions your customers typically ask — across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. If your business name does not appear, or appears rarely or inaccurately, you have a gap.

A Known Entity AI Visibility Audit gives you a structured, documented baseline across all major platforms, together with a clear picture of where your competitors currently stand.

Earned media is coverage, commentary, and citation that your organisation receives from third-party sources: trade publications, industry bodies, journalists, review platforms, expert directories, podcasts, and other credible external voices. It is called earned because it is not paid for and not self-published — it is coverage that a third party has chosen to produce because they consider your organisation, your people, or your ideas to be genuinely noteworthy.

AI systems do not simply trust what an organisation says about itself. They look for corroboration from sources they have independently learned to consider authoritative. When a respected trade publication quotes your managing director, when an industry body includes you in a best-practice guide, when a review platform carries consistent positive assessments of your work — AI takes note.

These external signals form a large part of the citation graph that determines whether AI treats your organisation as a credible source or overlooks it entirely. Every piece of genuine third-party coverage is a potential AI citation source.

We treat earned media as a strategic programme rather than a series of one-off activities. Working from your audit findings and your entity definition, we identify the publications, platforms, and voices that carry most weight with AI systems in your sector.

We develop a targeted outreach programme: expert commentary, contributed bylines, research-led stories, industry award entries, review platform profiles, and — where the evidence trail supports it — Wikipedia presence. Every piece of placed coverage is logged and tracked as part of your citation graph.

There is significant overlap. Strong PR has always built credibility, and the disciplines share a great deal. The difference is in how the work is scoped, targeted, and measured. Traditional PR focuses primarily on human audiences and media relationships. Known Entity's earned media work is designed with AI citation specifically in mind.

For organisations already working with a PR agency, our approach is directly complementary. The coverage your PR agency places is already building potential AI citations. We ensure that work is properly structured, tracked, and reflected in your AI visibility scores.

PR agencies are natural partners for Known Entity. The coverage they place on behalf of clients is precisely the kind of third-party, authoritative material that AI systems draw on when deciding whom to cite.

Known Entity works with PR agencies to add an AI visibility layer to their existing client offering. This can take the form of audit and reporting services that the agency delivers under their own brand, joint client engagements, or strategic guidance that helps agencies understand how to frame and measure the AI value of their earned media work.

AI systems are trained on — and continue to draw from — the body of credible, authoritative content that publications produce. Coverage in a well-regarded trade title does not just reach the publication's readership: it enters the pool of sources that AI systems treat as reliable.

PR agencies now have a compelling new argument for the value of their work. Every placement is not just an impression — it is a potential citation that could influence AI responses for years.

We offer PR agencies the ability to demonstrate, in clear and measurable terms, that the coverage they secure for clients is contributing to AI visibility and citation frequency. We can provide white-label AI visibility reporting, joint client audits, and guidance on how GEO and AEO fit alongside existing media relations work.

We never approach an agency's clients directly — the relationship is always through the agency.

The starting point is always the AI Visibility Audit. It takes three to four weeks, delivers a structured and actionable report, and gives you a precise picture of your current AI Authority, your competitive positioning, and the priority areas for improvement.

The audit produces a clear roadmap. Depending on your findings, that typically leads to a knowledge base build, a strategic messaging review, an earned media programme, or a combination of all three. We work through the findings together and agree the right sequence of activity for your situation.

Contact the Known Entity team at hello@knownentity.ai or via WhatsApp on +44 7411 934700. We are happy to have an initial conversation about your current situation before you commit to an audit.