What is Wikidata?

Wikidata describes itself as "a free, collaborative, multilingual, secondary knowledge base" (Wikidata, read 1 November 2026). It collects structured data for Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects and anyone who wants to reuse it. Its main page counted 123,856,643 data entities on 1 November 2026.

Each item has an ID: "a Q followed by a number, such as Douglas Adams (Q42)". An item has a label, a description, optional aliases and statements. A statement is a property and a value; properties have P numbers, such as "educated at (P69)".

The data is "available under the Creative Commons CC0 License", so anyone can reuse it without asking.

Why does Wikidata matter for B2B SaaS and AI answers?

Wikidata is an open knowledge graph of entities and their links to other databases. The Douglas Adams item lists his official website (P856) and IDs in other systems, including a Freebase ID (P646). Freebase was one of the sources Google named when it launched its Knowledge Graph in 2012 (Google blog).

Because the data is free to reuse, it can travel to many systems. We found no statement from an AI provider on whether or how its assistant uses Wikidata, so do not expect an item to get you named. It is one more public, structured record of your company's basic facts.

Can my company have a Wikidata item?

Only if it meets Wikidata's notability rules. An item must meet at least one of three criteria:

  1. It has at least one valid sitelink to a page on Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikiquote or another listed Wikimedia project.
  2. It refers to "a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity" that can be described using serious and publicly available references.
  3. It fulfils a structural need, for example to make statements in other items more useful.

The page does not address companies or self-promotion specifically. Our reading: a new SaaS company with no independent coverage may struggle to meet the second test. The page says the community makes the final decision, and items can go through a request for deletion.

How do you add or improve a Wikidata item?

  1. Search Wikidata for your company first. An item may already exist.
  2. If it does, check the label, description, official website, founding date and founder against serious public sources.
  3. Add references to each statement, such as press coverage.
  4. Link the item from your Organization markup with sameAs.
  5. Keep the item factual. Wikidata is a public knowledge base, not a profile page.

Example (hypothetical)

A hypothetical company, Acme Help Desk, has been covered in two trade publications. An editor creates an item with the label "Acme Help Desk", the description "help desk software company", instance of business, official website, inception year and founder, each with a reference. Acme adds the item URL to its sameAs list.

  • Wikipedia is the encyclopedia, with articles. Wikidata holds the structured facts.
  • Google's knowledge panel shows facts from Google's own Knowledge Graph, which draws on many sources.
  • Entity SEO is the wider work; a Wikidata item is one part, where it fits the rules.

For the full plan to get named in AI answers, see the LLM SEO guide.