I searched my own name in AI and half my work was missing.
Last summer, I did something every business owner should do but many avoid: I ego-surfed across every AI tool I could find.
Google? Check. ChatGPT? Yep. Perplexity? Sure, why not.
And that’s when I discovered I’d accidentally erased half my professional identity from the internet’s collective brain.
Perplexity knew all about my old podcast, Social Slowdown—the one I stopped releasing in 2023. It could tell you the premise, link to episodes, explain my entire philosophy around why soloists & small businesses shouldn’t be dependent on social media.
But my current podcast, Aggressively Human? The show I co-host with Jessica Lackey where we explore how to stay human in the age of AI?
Crickets.
Wait, that’s not quite right.
Once I realized the gap, my next search in Perplexity was, “What is the Aggressively Human podcast?” And Perplexity knew exactly what it was. It could tell me it was co-hosted by Meg Casebolt and Jessica Lackey.
But AI didn’t connect that ‘podcast-co-host Meg Casebolt entity’ was the same as ‘Love At First Search Meg Casebolt entity.’ In Perplexity’s knowledge graph, I existed as two separate people. One Meg ran a business called Love At First Search and used to have a podcast about social media. A completely different Meg Casebolt co-hosted a podcast about AI and humanity.
Same name. Different entities. No connection.
And the problem is more common than you think. I study this stuff all day, this is literally what I teach … and I still missed these connections.
We had over 40 episodes when I realized my error — that’s 40 episodes where I introduced myself by name and talked about my experience as an SEO/AEO strategist. 40 episodes where Jessica had written painstakingly detailed show notes… and AI didn’t realize they were ours.
I’d made a critical mistake in how I’d structured my digital presence—one that’s costing countless small business owners their visibility right now.
In other words: I’d fragmented my entity.
Here’s what happened: Aggressively Human lives on Substack. I co-host it instead of outright owning it, so it felt natural to keep it separate from my business website at Love At First Search.
This made perfect sense to me. I knew these were both my projects. I could hold that information in my head.
But AI tools don’t have the context and memory to make those connections.
They’re not reading your mind or following your career narrative. They’re looking at explicit connections like links, consistent naming, and repeated associations. They’re building what’s called a “knowledge graph,” which they describe as ‘a constellation of related concepts’ … but every time I read about it, I can only think of this gif of Charlie’s murder board from It’s Always Sunny:
When I searched myself in Perplexity, it showed me exactly what connections I’d failed to make in its knowledge graphy:
- My name: Meg Casebolt ✓
- My business: Love At First Search ✓
- My old podcast: Social Slowdown ✓
- My new podcast: … who?
Basically, all my identities were on the murder board, but I hadn’t hung the string between them.
I hadn’t linked from my website to Substack or imported any of those Substack posts to my own domain. And even though I introduced myself on every episode, I hadn’t created the structural connections that would tell AI tools “this Meg Casebolt is the same Meg Casebolt is the same Meg Casebolt.”
This is what we call entity optimization. And if you’ve never heard that term before, you’re not alone. All these tools are running with wildly complicated systems that don’t necessary come with handbooks of how they work. They just … do.
But if you want to show up in those AI summaries, entity optimization should be a key component of your marketing strategy, because it’s quietly determining whether you show up or disappear.
What the Heck Is an Entity?
In the world of modern search — including Google and AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini — an entity is any clearly defined person, business, place, or concept that these systems can recognize and categorize.
I describe entities as the nouns of the internet. Any person, place, thing, or concept you can clearly define exists as an entity in the knowledge graph — AI’s interconnected map of the world and the relationships between everything in it.
You are an entity. Your business is an entity. Your framework is an entity. Your podcast is an entity. Your book is an entity. Each one exists as a node on the map — and the strings between those nodes are the relationships: this person founded this company, this person created this framework, this person co-hosts this podcast.
When those strings exist, AI can trace your full constellation. When they don’t, AI sees the nodes but can’t see the shape. It knows the stars exist. It can’t see that they belong to the same sky.
What a completed Entity Constellation looks like: Brené Brown
Brené Brown is one of the most entity-optimized people on the internet — not because she’s famous, but because every element of her work is explicitly connected to every other element, and all of it connects back to her
If you’ve ever read Daring Greatly, heard Brené Brown’s TED Talk on vulnerability, or watched her Netflix special, you already know that she’s a Texas-based sociologist, researcher, and speaker. So do search engines and AI tools—because her name, work, and core concepts show up in consistent ways across every platform she touches.
Her constellation looks like this:
Person entity: Brené Brown — researcher, author, speaker Brand entity: Brené Brown Education and Research Group Concept entities: vulnerability, shame, courage, empathy, wholehearted living Product entities: Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Atlas of the Heart Media entities: Unlocking Us, Dare to Lead (podcasts)
- Person entity: Brené Brown (researcher, author, speaker)
- Brand/business entity: Brené Brown Education and Research Group (BBEARG)
- Concept entities: vulnerability, shame, courage, empathy, wholehearted living
- Product entities: Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Atlas of the Heart (books)
- Media entities: Unlocking Us (podcast), Dare to Lead (podcast)
Every one of these is its own entity in the knowledge graph — but they all connect back to her as the primary node. AI doesn’t just know she wrote Daring Greatly. It knows that book is about vulnerability and courage, which are concepts she is known for. The connections reinforce each other, and they all lead back to her name.
Her name is used consistently across bios, bylines, book covers, and podcast intros. Her website is clearly tied to her brand. Every interview, podcast episode, course, and book reinforces that she’s the voice on shame, vulnerability, and courage.
That’s what it looks like to have a complete entity constellation. And you don’t need to be world-famous to build one. You just need to be consistent and intentional.
Brené Brown isn’t showing up in AI tools because she’s famous. She’s showing up because her name and ideas are clearly, consistently tied together.
Every interview, podcast episode, course, and book she creates reinforces that she’s the voice on shame, vulnerability, and courage. She’s not just a content creator; she’s an entity.
And you don’t need to be world-famous to do this well. You just need to be consistent and intentional.
Entity Optimization at the Small Business Scale: Diann Wingert
Diann Wingert is an ADHD entrepreneur coach. When you Google her name, the results show exactly what entity optimization looks like for a small business:
- Person entity: Diann Wingert — therapist, coach, entrepreneur
- Brand entity: Diann Wingert Coaching
- Concept entities: ADHD, neurodivergent entrepreneur, business coach, mindset
- Media entity: ADHD-ish (podcast)
- Service entities: ADHD business coaching, entrepreneurship coaching
- Methodology entity: The ADHD-ish Method
Every time Diann appears on a podcast, writes a guest article, or releases an episode of ADHD-ish, she’s strengthening the connections between these entities in the knowledge graph.
Every time Diann appears on a podcast, writes a guest article, or releases an episode of ADHD-ish, she’s strengthening the connections between these entities in the knowledge graph.
How Fast Can This Actually Work?
When I searched “ADHD business coach” during a training, she showed up #1 in Google’s organic results. But she wasn’t appearing in the AI Overview at the top of the page — Google trusted her enough to rank her first, but the AI summary was pulling from other sources.
I told Diann what I’d found, and she did exactly what I recommended: she updated her About Page SEO Title to include “ADHD business coach” and added a section with an H2 headline: “What is an ADHD Business Coach?“
Two weeks later, I checked again. Lo and behold, I saw a familiar face:
Not because she’d gained another certification to become more of an expert … but because she gave the AI exactly what it needed: a clear, direct answer to the specific question people were asking, written by someone the system already trusted.
This is what I mean when I say entity optimization is the foundation. Diann already had the semantic cluster—years of content about ADHD, entrepreneurs, business coaching. The AI already recognized her as credible. She just needed to make that one explicit connection: “I am an ADHD business coach, here’s what that means.”
When your entity foundation is solid, visibility can shift that fast.
Want some help knowing how well your entities are optimized … and what to do next if they’re not as solid as Diann’s? Download the free Entity Optimization Playbook:
Why Entity Fragmentation Happens
HeI knew Aggressively Human was my podcast. I knew Love At First Search was my business. I could hold both of those facts in my head simultaneously without any confusion.
AI can’t infer relationships like that.
AI tools aren’t reading your mind or following your career narrative. They’re looking at explicit connections: links, consistent naming, repeated associations. They build their understanding of you entirely from what’s been stated clearly in the public record. Implied connections don’t count. Relationships you haven’t made explicit don’t exist in the knowledge graph.
This is why entity fragmentation is so common among established experts. You’ve been building your work for years. Some of it lives on your website. Some of it lives on Substack. Some of it lives in podcast show notes on other people’s platforms. Some of it was published under a slightly different version of your name. Some of it references a business name you used to use.
AI encounters all of those fragments and does its best to connect them. Sometimes it gets it right. Often it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, you end up with multiple partial versions of yourself floating in the knowledge graph — none of them complete, none of them fully attributed to the real you.
What AI Actually Needs From Your Entities
There are three things AI is looking for when it tries to understand who you are:
Clarity — who you are, unambiguously. Consistent naming across platforms, clear category signals, enough specificity that AI can distinguish you from everyone else with a similar name or a similar offer. If you go by Meg in some places and Margaret in others, those can register as two different entities.
Relationships — how your entities connect to each other. You are the founder of your company. You are the creator of your framework. You are the co-host of your podcast. These relationships aren’t obvious to AI unless you state them. The relationship statement is the string.
Corroboration — third-party confirmation that you are who you say you are. When your LinkedIn says you founded your company, and your website says you founded your company, and the podcast directory says you host your show, and your schema markup ties all of those together — AI can triangulate. One source is a claim. Multiple independent sources saying the same thing is evidence.
These three things aren’t separate tasks. Clarity makes you recognizable. Relationships make you connected. Corroboration makes you credible. Together, they’re what turns a scattered collection of online presences into a coherent entity constellation that AI can map, attribute, and recommend.
So how do I actually update & improve my entity?
This post defined what an entity is, but didn’t explain how to build or improve your entity foundation — declaring who you are, writing your entity signal statement, placing it correctly across your site, and encoding it in schema markup.
And it works. Within a few weeks of optimizing my entity, Perplexity started including Aggressively Human in my results:
Ready to do your own entity audit? I’ve created a complete Entity Optimization Checklist that walks you through:
- A full diagnostic of your current visibility across AI tools
- Specific fixes for the most common entity gaps
- How to write entity signal statements for your homepage and bios
- The relationship between entity optimization and authority building
- Examples from real small businesses (not just Brené Brown)
Download the Complete Entity Optimization Playbooks, one the guides inside the AI Findability Library:
And when you’re ready to build the full methodology — declaring your entities, writing your ESS, encoding it in schema — The Entity Declaration covers the complete process.
Brand Entities is the B in the BEACON Framework, developed by Meg Casebolt of Love at First Search. This post explained what an entity is, and the methodology for building or optimizing your entity is covered in The Entity Declaration, which is part of Stage 1 of the Unmistakable Authority Method.
Entity clarity & optmization is taught inside Signal, a year-long mentorship for building the kind of search presence that AI systems recognize and recommend.
