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GEO Toolbox

How AI Search Works

Named Entity Recognition (NER)

Also: NER, entity recognition

Named entity recognition (NER) is the natural language processing step that detects and classifies the entities (people, brands, places, products) mentioned in text. It is how search and AI engines turn a string of words into known things they can connect to facts in a knowledge graph.

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When an engine reads a query or a page, NER spots the entity mentions and resolves each to a specific entity rather than a literal phrase. That is the difference between matching the word "Apple" and knowing whether you mean the company or the fruit.

For your brand, NER is the first gate. If an engine cannot cleanly recognize your name as an entity, it cannot attach the right facts to you. Consistent naming and a clear entity home make that recognition reliable.