What is the difference between a keyword and an entity in search?

The difference between a keyword and an entity marks the line between classic SEO and modern reputation work. A keyword is a query string – ‘reputation management firm,’ ‘best hedge fund’ – that a page tries to rank for. An entity is a recognized thing with its own identity in Google’s Knowledge Graph and the AI engines: Five Blocks the firm, a named executive, a specific product. Traditional SEO optimizes pages to rank for keywords. Entity work optimizes the signals that make search and AI recognize a distinct identity and describe it accurately. The shift matters because AI engines and Knowledge Panels operate on entities, not strings: when someone asks ChatGPT about a company, the model is reasoning about an entity it has assembled from Wikipedia, Wikidata, owned properties, and authoritative citations, then rendering what it knows. A reputation program that only chases keyword rankings leaves the entity layer unmanaged, which is exactly the layer that now governs how a brand or person is understood and summarized.