How to Optimize Your About Page for AI Citations

Your About page is probably your least-updated page. Most businesses wrote it during launch, added a founder photo, and haven't touched it since.

That's a real problem for AI visibility. When ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini decides whether your business is worth citing, your About page is one of the first places it looks for entity verification — the structured facts that confirm you exist, what you do, where you operate, and why you're credible.

A narrative essay about your passion for home renovation is fine for humans who've already found you. It's not what AI retrieval systems are looking for.

What AI models are extracting from About pages

AI models aren't reading your About page for the story. They're scanning it for specific facts:

- Your business name, exactly as it appears elsewhere on the web - Your founding date or years in operation - Your service type and service geography - Credentials, licenses, and certifications - Named people — especially founders and leadership - Associations with recognized professional organizations

When a model finds these facts clearly stated and matching what's on your Google Business Profile, your schema, and your directory listings, it gains confidence in your entity. High entity confidence drives citations. Vague or absent entity data gets you skipped.

The difference between a story and a declaration

Most About pages read like this: "We started Johnson Plumbing because we believe every homeowner deserves honest service. Mike grew up watching his dad fix pipes, and after 20 years in the trade..."

This is fine. But it doesn't contain the structured facts AI models need.

Anchor your story in specific, machine-readable facts: "Johnson Plumbing was founded in 2011 in Hamilton, Ontario. We're a licensed residential and commercial plumbing company serving Hamilton, Burlington, and Ancaster. Mike Johnson, our founder, holds a Master Plumber license issued by the TSSA. We've been members of the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating since 2013."

That paragraph doesn't kill your brand voice. It states facts an AI model can extract and cross-reference. Keep your narrative — but open with the declaration.

Named people make your business entity more trustworthy

AI models treat businesses with verifiable people attached as more credible than anonymous entities. A named founder, a named operations manager, a named lead technician — these connect your business to a real, identifiable person, which reduces model uncertainty.

You don't need to publish personal details. A name and a title is enough. "Founded by Sarah Chen, CPA" or "Led by James Reilly, P.Eng." gives models a person to associate with the business entity, and that association increases citation confidence.

This matters especially for professional services. Lawyers, accountants, engineers, and healthcare providers are expected to have named practitioners. If your About page doesn't include them, AI models may treat you as less trustworthy than a competitor whose does.

Credentials are entity signals, not just marketing copy

Most professional service businesses have licenses, certifications, and memberships listed somewhere on their site — usually in a footer badge wall or a "Why Choose Us" section.

Move them to your About page, and make them text, not images. "We hold an Electrical Contractor Registration Certificate issued by the Electrical Safety Authority of Ontario" is an AI-readable claim. A PNG of the ESA logo is not.

Be specific. "Fully licensed and insured" means nothing to an AI model — it can't verify that claim against anything. A named licensing body, a membership organization, a certification standard — those are claims a retrieval system can at least partially cross-reference. Specificity builds confidence.

Schema on the About page compounds the signal

Your Organization or LocalBusiness schema block should reflect the same facts your About page text states. If your text says you've been operating since 2011, your `foundingDate` field should say 2011. If you list three service cities in the body copy, your `areaServed` array should include all three.

Schema that conflicts with body text creates a data contradiction AI models notice. Alignment between them — same name, same location, same founding year, same credentials — is what builds the entity confidence that leads to citations.

A `founder` field in your Organization schema, linking to a Person block with a name and job title, is a small addition that consistently improves entity recognition in audits. Most businesses don't include it.

The common About page failures we see in audits

**Too short.** A three-sentence About page tells AI models almost nothing. Under 150 words of substantive content and your page isn't pulling weight. Add a credentials section, a service area list, a founding story that contains actual facts.

**No founding date.** How long you've been operating is a credibility signal. A business that's been running since 2007 has a different entity profile than one that launched last year. If you've been around a while, say so explicitly.

**No geographic specificity.** "Serving the Greater Toronto Area" matches almost no queries. "Serving Oakville, Burlington, Mississauga, and Brampton" matches dozens of city-specific queries. Name the cities.

**No named credentials section.** Create a dedicated section for licenses, certifications, and memberships. Write them as descriptive text — not logos, not acronyms. Write it for a machine that needs to answer a question about who the credible plumber in Hamilton is.

What to fix first

You don't need to rewrite your About page — you need to add to it. Keep your story. Then add:

1. A one-paragraph entity declaration: business name, city, founding year, service type, service area 2. Named leadership with titles 3. A credentials section listing licenses, certifications, and memberships as text 4. Schema that mirrors everything in the body

Most About pages can be updated in under an hour. We regularly see citation scores improve after clients make these additions — especially on Perplexity and Gemini, which both rely heavily on entity verification data when generating recommendations.

If you want to know how your About page is currently scoring as an entity signal, a free Signal Check at sourcepull.ca audits your business across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini — and shows exactly which entity signals are missing or mismatched.