About and mentions are the simplest ways to tell search engines and AI assistants what a page is primarily about and which entities it references.

When you use them intentionally across templates, you create a structured map of your topics, products, authors, and partners.

This guide shows you how to design an about/mentions strategy, deploy JSON-LD on key page types, avoid over-stuffing, and measure impact on relevance and AI citations.

Pair it with our entity pillar at Entity Optimization: The Complete Guide & Playbook to keep your entity graph coherent across the site.

About vs mentions: quick definitions

  • about: the primary entities a page focuses on.

  • mentions: secondary entities referenced for context (partners, examples, locations, supporting topics).

Use a small, deliberate list; match every entity with on-page content and links where possible.

Why about/mentions matter

  • Disambiguation: clarifies which brand, product, or person you mean.

  • Relevance: signals the topical focus of each page to Google and AI systems.

  • Coverage: connects your content to related entities without overloading mainEntity.

  • Consistency: aligns schema with internal links and off-site profiles, reducing mixed signals.

Design an about/mentions strategy by template

Homepage or About page

  • about: Organization, core products/services, flagship locations.

  • mentions: founders/leadership, key industries served, partners.

Product or service page

  • about: Product or Service entity with brand.

  • mentions: use cases, compatible systems, industries, related features.

Category or collection page

  • about: category Concept or top products represented.

  • mentions: featured products, subcategories, related brands.

Article/Guide

  • about: primary topic entity and, when relevant, product or location the article covers.

  • mentions: examples, sources, tools, people or companies cited.

Author page

  • about: Person entity for the author.

  • mentions: specialties, organizations, publications, events.

Location page

  • about: LocalBusiness entity for the location.

  • mentions: services, neighborhoods served, practitioners, events hosted.

Event page

  • about: Event entity, organizer, and location.

  • mentions: speakers (Person), sponsors (Organization), related products/services.

JSON-LD patterns

Article with about/mentions

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "@id": "https://example.com/insights/entity-checklist#article",
  "headline": "Entity SEO Checklist",
  "about": [
    {"@id": "https://example.com/#org"},
    {"@id": "https://example.com/products/widget-2000#product"}
  ],
  "mentions": [
    {"@id": "https://example.com/integrations/crm-suite#software"},
    {"@id": "https://example.com/locations/lisbon#localbusiness"}
  ],
  "author": {"@id": "https://example.com/team/ana-silva#person"},
  "publisher": {"@id": "https://example.com/#org"}
}

Product page with about/mentions

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "@id": "https://example.com/products/widget-2000#product",
  "name": "Widget 2000",
  "about": [{"@id": "https://example.com/#org"}],
  "mentions": [
    {"@id": "https://example.com/industries/industrial-automation#concept"},
    {"@id": "https://example.com/integrations/sap#software"}
  ],
  "brand": {"@id": "https://example.com/#org"},
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "1999.00",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "url": "https://example.com/products/widget-2000"
  }
}

Local page with about/mentions

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "@id": "https://example.com/locations/lisbon#localbusiness",
  "name": "Example Clinic Lisbon",
  "about": [{"@id": "https://example.com/#org"}],
  "mentions": [
    {"@id": "https://example.com/services/physiotherapy#service"},
    {"@id": "https://example.com/team/dr-sousa#person"}
  ],
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "Av. da Liberdade 100",
    "addressLocality": "Lisbon",
    "postalCode": "1250-140",
    "addressCountry": "PT"
  },
  "geo": {
    "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
    "latitude": 38.7200,
    "longitude": -9.1400
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
    "opens": "09:00",
    "closes": "19:00"
  }]
}

Rules of thumb for about/mentions

  • Keep about to 1–3 primary entities per page; avoid stuffing.

  • Use mentions for supporting entities that genuinely appear on the page.

  • Reuse @id values consistently; do not invent new IDs for each mention.

  • Prioritize entities tied to revenue and visibility; avoid long tail noise.

  • Ensure about/mentions align with headings, body copy, and internal links.

Avoid common mistakes

  • Marking entities not present on-page.

  • Mixing languages or IDs across markets; keep one @id and translate labels.

  • Using generic Wikipedia links without establishing your own IDs and pages first.

  • Overloading category pages with every product; focus on representative entities.

  • Leaving mentions empty on pages that reference partners or integrations that matter.

How about/mentions support AI and rich results

  • Improve AI Overviews disambiguation by explicitly naming the primary entity.

  • Help assistants pull concise facts about products, locations, and authors.

  • Strengthen topical authority when clusters share consistent about/mentions patterns.

  • Reduce hallucinations by connecting supporting entities (integrations, ingredients, people) to stable IDs.

Template-by-template checklists

  • Homepage/About: Organization about; mentions of products, locations, founders, industries.

  • Product/Service: Product/Service about; mentions of use cases, integrations, industries, support content.

  • Article: Article about main topic and relevant product/location; mentions examples, tools, cited brands or people.

  • Author: Person about; mentions specialties, worksFor, publications, events.

  • Location: LocalBusiness about; mentions services, practitioners, events, neighborhoods served.

  • Event: Event about event entity and organizer; mentions speakers, sponsors, related products/services.

Workflow to deploy at scale

  • Create an entity map with @id, name, type, sameAs, and owner; store centrally.

  • Define expected about/mentions per template in a spec sheet; include max counts.

  • Update CMS models to include entity selectors for about/mentions to reduce free text errors.

  • Generate JSON-LD from the entity map; avoid manual entry per page.

  • Validate sample URLs per template in staging; crawl production weekly to catch missing fields.

QA and monitoring

  • Run Rich Results Test on sample URLs; confirm about/mentions are detected where supported.

  • Crawl to extract about/mentions and compare against expected entities per template.

  • Track AI citations and PAA/Overview snippets that reuse your entity names; note changes after updates.

  • Set alerts for missing or duplicate @id values and for pages with empty about fields where required.

Measurement

  • Coverage: percentage of target pages with about and mentions populated correctly.

  • Disambiguation: drops in branded query modifiers (city/industry) and fewer misattributed AI answers.

  • CTR: improvement on articles or product pages after adding clear about/mentions.

  • AI citations: increases in AI Overviews naming your brand, products, or authors after rollout.

  • Freshness: time since last review of entity lists; schedule audits for fast-changing products/partners.

Governance and ownership

  • Assign owners per template: product managers for product about/mentions, content for articles, ops for locations/events.

  • Keep a change log of entity map updates and schema deployments.

  • Standardize sameAs sources; clean dead links quarterly.

  • Align with structured data standards documented in your governance playbook.

Case example: SaaS integration hub

  • Issue: integration guides mentioned dozens of tools but schema lacked clarity.

  • Actions: created a controlled list of integration entities with @id, added about/mentions to guides, linked to partner pages, and added internal anchors.

  • Results: AI Overviews began citing the company for “[brand] + [integration] setup,” and CTR on integration pages rose 11%.

Case example: clinic content

  • Issue: articles referenced practitioners and services without structured references.

  • Actions: added Person and Service entities to about/mentions on articles; linked to practitioner and service pages; aligned LocalBusiness pages.

  • Results: local pack and FAQ snippets stabilized; AI assistants started citing the correct practitioners for specific treatments.

Multilingual and EU considerations

  • Keep one @id per entity across languages; translate labels and descriptions; use inLanguage where appropriate.

  • Localize examples and sameAs links when different profiles exist per market; keep them connected via the same ID.

  • Follow EU privacy norms: avoid linking personal social accounts without consent; use professional profiles instead.

  • For Portugal, include Portuguese labels alongside English when audiences expect both; ensure about/mentions match the page language.

Freshness and change management

  • Review entity lists quarterly; remove retired products/partners and add new ones.

  • After rebrands, update about/mentions IDs, sameAs, and on-page names; retest prompts to ensure AI picks up the change.

  • Use feature flags to disable blocks if validation fails post-release.

Dashboards and alerts

  • Coverage: share of target pages with about and mentions populated; filter by template and market.

  • Accuracy: count of pages where about/mentions are missing expected entities (based on template rules) or include off-list entities.

  • AI citations: log AI Overview and assistant mentions by entity; note which pages they reference.

  • Impact: CTR and conversions for pages before/after adding structured about/mentions.

  • Freshness: age of entity lists and last audit date; set reminders for fast-changing catalogs or partner ecosystems.

Maturity model for about/mentions

  • Starter: about/mentions on a handful of articles; ad-hoc entity selection.

  • Structured: entity map exists; templates have defined about/mentions rules; validation in staging.

  • AI-ready: coverage across key templates, prompt testing cadence, dashboards for coverage and citations, multilingual IDs aligned.

  • Optimized: automated CMS selectors, alerts for drift, experiments on entity mixes per template, and post-mortems after incidents.

Prompt testing for clarity

  • Build prompts that mirror real questions: “What is [product]?”, “Who runs [brand]?”, “Does [brand] integrate with [tool]?”, “Who wrote [article]?”

  • Test monthly in AI Overviews and other assistants; log whether answers cite your pages and if entities are correct.

  • When answers are wrong, adjust about/mentions, on-page definitions, and sameAs; retest after deployment.

  • Track wins to show stakeholders the impact of clean about/mentions on AI visibility.

Implementation checklist (copy/paste)

  • Entity map with @id, type, name, sameAs, owner, last updated.

  • Template rules for about/mentions documented (min/max counts, required entities).

  • CMS fields or selectors to choose entities; no free-text IDs.

  • JSON-LD outputs about/mentions referencing the canonical @id values.

  • On-page copy includes the same entities with clear definitions and links.

  • Rich Results Test passes on sample URLs per template; crawler confirms presence at scale.

  • Dashboards updated with coverage and error metrics; alerts configured.

  • Change log updated with each deployment and entity map revision.

  • +## Localization and EU/Portugal specifics

  • Translate labels and descriptions for about/mentions while keeping one @id per entity; use inLanguage to signal language.

  • Localize examples and partners in mentions when they differ by market; keep them tied to the same canonical ID.

  • Ensure about/mentions align with hreflang targets; mismatched entities across languages create confusion.

  • Follow EU privacy norms when referencing people; use professional profiles and avoid personal accounts without consent.

  • For Portugal, include Portuguese labels where the page is PT; keep brand and product names consistent across languages.

  • +## Governance and roles

  • SEO/content: defines template rules and reviews coverage.

  • Engineering: maintains JSON-LD templates and CMS selectors; enforces required fields.

  • Data/ops: keeps entity maps updated for products, partners, and locations.

  • PR/brand: curates sameAs sources and approves external references.

  • Analytics: owns dashboards and alerts; reports on impact to stakeholders.

  • +## Troubleshooting quick wins

  • If AI answers cite the wrong entity, tighten about to the primary ID and remove irrelevant mentions; add disambiguation in the intro.

  • If coverage is low, add required about/mentions to templates and enforce them in the CMS with validation.

  • If partners change names, update the entity map and sameAs links, then revalidate and retest prompts.

  • If Search Console shows rich result drops, check for missing about/mentions on affected templates and for IDs that changed during releases.

  • When launching new products or locations, add them to the entity map first so about/mentions stay consistent from day one.

How AISO Hub can help

AISO Hub designs about/mentions strategies that strengthen your entity graph and AI visibility.

We build your entity map, configure templates, and set monitoring that keeps markup accurate.

  • AISO Audit: spot missing or noisy entities and prioritize fixes for about/mentions

  • AISO Foundation: deploy CMS fields, JSON-LD patterns, and governance that keep IDs and links consistent

  • AISO Optimize: expand clusters, refine about/mentions choices, and measure CTR and citation gains

  • AISO Monitor: track coverage, freshness, and AI mentions with alerts before ambiguity returns

Conclusion: make every page explicit

About and mentions turn every page into a clear statement of what it covers and who it references.

When you choose entities deliberately, align them with content and links, and keep them fresh, you reduce ambiguity and earn more accurate citations in search and AI experiences.

Deploy the checklists here, monitor results, and make entity clarity part of every release.