James Dooley: Hi, today I'm joined with Jason Barnard and today's topic is about brand entity SEO in 2026. So many people are talking about it. So many people are now understanding that this is the most important part of search engine optimization. So Jason, you've been working with knowledge graphs since 2015, a lot a long time before everybody else. What's changed now in 2026?

Jason Barnard: A really big thing with knowledger graph is that it used to be this kind of niche geeky thing that I was obsessed by but nobody else cared about except for the knowledge panel which is something that people have always liked but never really thought was important. Now it's fundamental to the new SEO answer engine optimization generative engine optimization. I call it AI assistive engine optimization. All of the algorithmic trinity, sorry, all of the AI assistive engines use the algorithmic trinity. Search engines plus LLM chat bots plus the knowledge graph. And the knowledge graph is all about factchecking. And so the knowledge graph has moved from this niche topic in SEO to a central focus in entity optimization which is now the foundation of the modern SEO.

James Dooley: Yeah. So I mean I may have so many people now talking about brand entity SEO but you was the only person I ever heard talking about it in 2015. You was like the first one especially that I knew of that actually spoke about knowledge graphs and now there's lots of others out that's coming along and that's doing it. But from the knowledge graph is this just focusing solely on Google or is it more than just Google with regards to the knowledge graphs?

Jason Barnard: Well, that's a really good question because people don't really think that number one Google has got multiple knowledge graphs. Number two, Bing have got a huge knowledge graph. Number three, Chat GPT have got a knowledge graph. And I've been saying that for a couple of years now. And Wordlift, Andrea Volpini, has just proved it. They have a knowledge graph inside Chat GPT. And I was having a chat the other day with somebody, a geeky person. My bet is that they're going to take the knowledge graph that they currently have in Chat GPT which is built using parameters and the strongest parameters become more or less a node. So it looks like it works sorry like a knowledge graph but because it's part of the LLM it's not reliable. So they're going to have to extract it and create a separate knowledge graph at some point.

James Dooley: Yeah. So how does something like Google's knowledge graph connect to Chat GPT or Plexity about a brand?

Jason Barnard: Yeah, Google's knowledge graph isn't shared by anybody else. It's obviously proprietary to Google. But if Google's knowledge graph has understood your entity enough to accept it as a node, as an entity within the knowledge graph, you can bet your bottom dollar all of the other AI have got a similar understanding of you because they all use the same data source, and that's the web index. And the web index, the part of the web index they're all using is your digital footprint. If your digital footprint is clean, if it's consistent, if it makes sense, they will all have at least a basic understanding of who you are, what you do, and who you serve, which is the foundation of entity.

James Dooley: Yeah. So, I've heard you speaking a few times about, let's say, a corporate brand, and if they don't have, let's say, a knowledge panel, the website becomes a proxy of who they are. But with regards to a person who's got a knowledge panel, does that then mean that the AI assistants understand their brand?

Jason Barnard: Yeah. Well, if Google's understood, as I said, the others have understood too. I mean, there's no direct way of proving it, but my experience has been. Oh, and the other thing is chat can now show knowledge panels.

James Dooley: Yeah, you sent me the web flow one and it looks just like a knowledge panel.

Jason Barnard: So you can see they've structured the data and right now once again it's in the LLM. They're going to extract it, create their own knowledge graph. There is zero doubt about that because all of these AI the big tech AI are using the algorithmic trinity in some way or another. And there is no other reasonable way to build an AI assisted engine than having an LLM chatbot for the conversation. Search results for niche and new information and knowledge graphs for factchecking. And nobody's going to reinvent the wheel. They're all going to do it the same way. In fact, they're all doing it the same way and they're not going to change.

James Dooley: So, like with regards to this, you you always speak about Google being a child and you always say that you've got to educate the algorithm. You got to educate Google as if it's a child. You've got to give confidence and clarity with who you are across the web. But when you talk about educating algorithms in practice, what does that mean?

Jason Barnard: Right? It means like with a child, explaining to it what it needs to understand, what you want it to understand. So for a child, you're just kind trying to get it to understand the world so that the child can function better dayto-day. With the algorithms, you can actually treat them as employees. They're your employees and they're underperforming because they're not doing their job recommending you to the subset of their users who are your audience. So you need to educate them so that they do understand what their job is and that you're the best and that they should be recommending you. And the foundational way of doing it is to optimize your digital footprint so that you are consistent across the entire web, not just your website. So SEO has moved from this very on-site kind of focus five, six years ago for most people to webwide, which is what I've always been doing because that understanding comes from you saying it on your website and making sure that all the corroboration out there is consistent and we've talked about it a lot creating the self-confirming loop of corroboration.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And then for anyone who's watching this, let's say they've already got a knowledge panel or let's say they've not. Is there any sort of priority of what you're looking at for some people that might have one and people that might not have what? What's the priority order in your opinion of what needs to be done?

Jason Barnard: Build your entity home web page, which is the about page on your website. Google call it the point of reconciliation. Some people call it the entity canonical. I call it the entity home. And you build that where you explain who you are, what you do, and who you serve. And you make sure that the HTML is incredibly clear, incredibly clean, and that your description on that page is very clear from top to bottom, most important to least important. Don't start with I was born in 1966, which I was. Start with I now do ABC, and work your way backwards. and don't put information that doesn't help your cause and add schema markup. But we were talking about that the other day. Schema markup is really important from the perspective of it confirms everything you should already be saying on the page.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Jason Barnard: So if you're not saying on the page, it shouldn't be in the schema markup for the vast majority. There are a few things like your date of birth. You would put in your schema markup. You wouldn't put it in your web page. But generally speaking, if you talk to Jono Alderson, who for me is the absolute, we can call him the godfather of schema markup, think of schema markup as repeating what's on the page to build confidence in the machine's mind that it's understood the page correctly.

James Dooley: On there you said about adding the about page on your website on your company website but the entity home can also be a personal jamesdooley.com as well. Would you always recommend for a person to have a personalized name.com name.co.uk or whatever it is to have that as well and that be the entity home.

Jason Barnard: Yeah. Because if you don't do that the machines will default to LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram. You rent that space. Why would you give your entire existence and identity to a rented space, you want to own the space where you actually identify who you are? And the algorithms are looking for an entity home actively. Whether you like it or not, you might as well give them one. And you've got to give them one that you control.

James Dooley: Yeah. And then one last thing is obviously so many people now are wanting to get knowledge panels. They want to improve the knowledge graph with like different optimization strategies. What things in your opinion are people doing wrong when they're not guided in the right way? Obviously, I've signed up to Cali Cube because I need them them billions of data points to understand who I am and what I do, what trusted sources I should be being on, but what are people doing wrong? Probably like myself previously, what what you're finding that business owners are doing wrong with knowledge graph optimization?

Jason Barnard: Well, there's a really common thing is that people come to me talking about Wikipedia obsessively. Wikipedia is tiny. Wikipedia is six million articles. Cali Cube has 70 million. Cali Cube is over 10 times bigger than Wikipedia in terms of entity knowledge and Google has 54 billion which is Wikipedia is 0.01% of Google's knowledge graph. So thinking Wikipedia is the solution to all your problems is a mistake because number one, you're going to spend a lot of time and a lot of money trying to get one. You probably won't get a Wikipedia page anyway because you're not famous. If you're not famous, forget it. Work on the sources that Google is using that the AI, Chat GPT, OpenAI, Perplexity are using. And that's sorry. And that's things as simple as Crunchbase. You're doing all of that. It's a much better strategy than getting obsessed by Wikipedia.

James Dooley: Yeah. Well, I mean on that there you're talking about Wikipedia being very small on the data set of entities and stuff like that, but everyone's also obsessed by Google and Google's only one form of like say search. Obviously there's Bing and there's all the LLMs that's coming along now and you've come along now with the algorithmic trinity and basically talking about the trio and the three different sets of things of what you should be optimizing for. For anyone watching this, can you kind of introduce them to what the algorithmic trinity is?

Jason Barnard: Yeah, it's a foundational set of technologies that all of the AI assistive engines use and they use LLM chat bots which is Gemini or Chat GPT at its foundation for the conversation and they have training data and they can have a conversation with you with what they already know. So it's like a kid just explaining to the teacher what they already know off the top of their head. Then the teacher asks them a question that they don't know the answer to. They go and look it up in the library. That's the search engine for new information or information they don't know. Then before the kid says it, they double check the information is correct because they don't want to look like a fool. And I've been saying this for the last 10 years. The child needs to be confident in what it's saying because it doesn't want to get it wrong. Like for example, put rocks in your pizza makes it look like a complete fool and it loses the trust of its users. And that's the knowledge graph. It's the encyclopedia. It's the knowledge graph which is like Wikipedia but once again 10,000 times bigger.

James Dooley: Yeah. And I just want to close out for anyone watching this. Jason Barnard at Cali Cube has been in the industry for well over a decade. He's the first person that I know of that was talking about knowledge graphs. And I want to personally thank you Jason for opening up this and opening up this angle of branding and how the knowledge vault and how the knowledge panels and the knowledge graph works. You were certainly the first one that I know of and a lot of other people know of and so many people in the SEO community. To me personally, thank you for opening up them concepts. So I just want to finish off with a thank you.

Jason Barnard: Well, thank you. That's very touching. Cheers. Thank you very much.

James Dooley: Byebye. Thanks, man.