Wikidata Hygiene: Checking Your Company's Item

Wikidata is a free, collaborative, multilingual knowledge base run by the Wikimedia community. Its data is released under a public domain (CC0) license, so anyone can copy and reuse it without asking. If you want the basics first, read what Wikidata is and how a knowledge graph links facts to entities.

That openness cuts both ways. A correct founding year travels freely. So does a wrong one.

Be clear about what this playbook does and does not do:

• It does: keep a widely reused public record of your company factually right, current and referenced.
• It does not: promise any change in AI answers. Nothing in our evidence base measures whether a Wikidata edit changes what ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity say. A July 2026 critical survey of 45 GEO studies found no technique with a stable, cross-platform causal effect on discoverability.

The longer answer sits in does my Wikidata entry affect what AI says. Treat Wikidata like your review profiles or a business directory: a third-party record of your facts that you check because errors there are public.

Start by confirming which item, if any, represents your company. Duplicates and look-alikes are common.

1. Go to wikidata.org and search your exact company name.
2. Open each plausible result. Every item has an ID that starts with Q followed by a number.
3. Read the label and description under the title. A good description is short and neutral, for example "software company based in Berlin".
4. Check the official website statement (P856). If it points to your domain, you've found your item.
5. Search again with former names, your legal name and common abbreviations. Look for a second item that describes the same company.
6. Note any Wikipedia sitelinks at the bottom of the page. They tell you which language editions have an article.
7. Save the Q-ID and add the item to your watchlist (the star icon, logged in). You'll get notified when someone edits it.

If two items describe the same company, don't merge them on the spot. Raise it on the item's talk page or the community's merge request page first.

If no item exists, see the FAQ below before creating one.

Work through the statements that describe identity, history and status. Check each one against a primary record you control, such as your registration filing or your About page.

Then check the label, description and aliases in each language your customers use. A missing alias for a former name makes the item harder to match.

Write down every wrong, missing or stale value before you edit anything. One list gives you a clean record of what changed and why.

A statement without a reference is an assertion. Wikidata's references usually combine "stated in" (P248) or "reference URL" (P854) with a "retrieved" date (P813).

For each core statement:

1. Open the references under the value.
2. Confirm the source exists, loads and actually states the fact.
3. Prefer independent sources (press coverage, government registries) over your own site where possible.
4. Look at the rank. Each value can be preferred, normal or deprecated.
5. Check time qualifiers: start time (P580), end time (P582) and point in time (P585).

Ranks and qualifiers do most of the work on changing facts. Say you run a hypothetical company that moved headquarters from Austin to Denver in 2025. The correct item keeps Austin with an end time, adds Denver with a start time and a reference, and marks Denver as preferred. Deleting Austin would erase true history.

Figures that change, like employee count (P1128), need a point in time qualifier. A headcount with no date reads as current forever.

This is the same discipline AI visibility tools apply when they detect factual errors about a company: check one fact at a time against a known record.

Wikidata is a volunteer community with public edit histories. Edits that look promotional get reverted, and they can draw scrutiny to the whole item.

Follow these norms:

• Disclose your connection. The Wikimedia Terms of Use require disclosure of paid contributions on all Wikimedia projects, Wikidata included. State your affiliation on your user page.
• Use a personal account. Don't share one company login across a team.
• Cite sources for every change. An unreferenced edit from an interested party is the easiest edit to revert.
• Stay neutral. Descriptions are not taglines. "Leading", "innovative" and "award-winning" don't belong.
• Don't delete sourced statements you dislike. If a value is wrong, add the correct one with a reference and deprecate the wrong one, giving a reason.
• Use the talk page for disputes. If another editor reverts you, explain your source there instead of editing back.
• Respect notability. Wikidata's notability guideline expects an item to describe an entity that serious public sources can identify. A brand-new company with no independent coverage may not qualify yet.

If a linked Wikipedia article is also wrong, that project has its own, stricter rules. Read whether you need a Wikipedia page before touching it.

Run this list every time you review the item.

• Q-ID saved and item on your watchlist
• No duplicate item for the same company
• Label, description and aliases correct in your key languages
• Instance of (P31) is the right entity type
• Official name (P1448) matches your legal name
• Inception (P571) correct and referenced
• Headquarters (P159) current, with past locations end-dated
• Official website (P856) live and canonical
• Founders and CEO correct, with start and end times
• Parent organization or owner reflects any acquisition
• No dissolved date unless you have actually closed
• Changing figures carry a point in time qualifier
• Every core statement has a working reference
• Correct values ranked preferred where several exist
• Your own site states the same facts in plain HTML

The last item matters. Your website should say the same founding year, headquarters and leadership as Wikidata. A specific fact stated on a page that can be fetched gives any engine a sentence it can quote, and contradictions between sources are hard for anyone to resolve. Apply the same check to your listings with the review platform fact accuracy playbook.

A healthy item

• One item, clearly yours, with a neutral description.
• Every core statement present, current and referenced.
• History preserved: old CEOs and locations end-dated, current ones preferred.
• Facts match your website and registry filings exactly.
• Recent edits in the history are small, sourced and uncontested.

An item that needs work

• Two items for the same company, or your item confused with a namesake.
• A former CEO still listed with no end time.
• An old domain in the official website field.
• A dissolved date on a company that is trading, or no dissolved date on one that closed.
• Statements with no references, or references that no longer load.
• A promotional description that invites reverts.

A bad result tells you what to fix, not how AI answers will change. If you also want to know what AI platforms currently say, the free checker on this site shows whether engines name you for up to three buyer questions. Treat that as a separate snapshot. Answers given with search on and search off can differ, as explained in search on vs search off.

Set two triggers.

On a schedule: review the full checklist once a quarter. It takes under an hour for most companies once the first pass is done.

On events: review within a week of any of these:

• a rename or rebrand
• a headquarters move
• a CEO or founder change
• an acquisition, merger or new parent company
• a shutdown of the company or a major product line
• a domain change

Between reviews, the watchlist does the monitoring. When a notification arrives, open the diff, check the change against your records and respond with a sourced edit or a talk page note.

Keep a simple log: date, Q-ID, what you checked, what you changed and the source you cited. It makes the next review faster and shows good faith if an edit is ever questioned.