Author Entity Schema: Building Verifiable Person Entities That AI Systems Trust
Author entity schema means using structured data (code that AI systems read) to declare who wrote or reviewed your content - and linking their credentials to verifiable external profiles. When AI systems see an article has a named author with a real credential and a verifiable LinkedIn profile, they treat the content as more trustworthy and cite it more often for authoritative queries.
Author entity schema is the technical bridge between your content and the verifiable human expertise behind it. AI systems that evaluate E-E-A-T before citation look for a complete entity chain: Organization → Person → Credentials → External Verification. Author schema provides the machine-readable version of this chain through sameAs links, hasCredential properties, and @id entity associations.
See also: Expert Contributor Strategy and E-E-A-T for AI.
Author Schema - 3 Required Layers
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
"@id": "https://yoursite.com/author/jane-smith",
"name": "Dr. Jane Smith",
"jobTitle": "Senior Cardiologist",
"url": "https://yoursite.com/author/jane-smith",
"image": "https://yoursite.com/images/jane-smith.jpg",
"description": "Dr. Jane Smith is a board-certified cardiologist with 15 years of clinical experience at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.",
"alumniOf": {
"@type": "CollegeOrUniversity",
"name": "Johns Hopkins University"
},
"hasCredential": {
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"credentialCategory": "degree",
"name": "MD Cardiology"
},
"sameAs": [
"https://linkedin.com/in/drjanesmith",
"https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XXXXX",
"https://www.acc.org/membership/profile/XXXXX"
],
"worksFor": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Your Health Site",
"url": "https://yoursite.com"
}
}Author Entity Recognition Checklist
Check off each completed element to see your author entity recognition score.