What happens during grounding
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot answer many questions by running a search in the background. They use Bing, Google or a crawler of their own. They turn what they find into an answer and often name their sources along the way.
On 10 February 2026 Microsoft introduced the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools. Under grounding queries it lists the phrases the AI used to fetch content it went on to cite.
At Google, AI Overviews take their sources from the normal search index. According to Google, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. Google says no extra files or special schema are needed for this.
What a grounding page is
A grounding page describes exactly one entity: a business, a person, a product or a place. It lives on your own website and states the facts plainly, in a form anyone can check. Name, type of business, area, owner, services and official profiles sit together at one fixed address.
When an AI comes across the page while looking something up, it should attach the facts to the right entity. That matters most where mix-ups are likely. The project itself calls the grounding page a GEO method, GEO being optimisation for AI answers. The article GEO or AEO explains the term.
The Grounding Page Standard
The concept comes from Hanns Kronenberg. It is published openly as the Grounding Page Standard and maintained by the Grounding Page Project, an open initiative. “GroundingPage®” is his registered trademark. The first version, 1.4, came out in November 2025, and the current version 2.0 on 26 October 2026.
The main addition in 2.0 is a set of seven requirements called Reference Integrity. Each entity gets a fixed identifier that stays the same across all of your own pages. Every link to an outside profile has to describe the same entity, and it has to be visible on the page as well. The human fact review now has seven points, and the new one covers exactly these references. Pages built to versions 1.6 and 1.7 remain valid. Since 2.0, an existing about page can meet the standard too.
Neither the W3C nor Schema.org nor Google stands behind the standard. According to the project’s FAQ, no provider has committed to taking it into account either. Its home page says plainly that grounding pages guarantee neither inclusion in training data nor retrieval, citation or recommendation.
What goes on the page, in this order
The standard recommends an order. Since version 1.6.1 it is optional, but for a small business it is still a good plan.
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Heading | Only the business name, as the H1 |
| Opening | Two or three short paragraphs: what the business does, for whom, and what it is not |
| Core facts | Type, industry, area, founding date, owner and status as a list or table. Name, address and phone exactly as everywhere else (NAP consistency) |
| Services | What you offer, in plain words |
| History | The key dates as a short timeline |
| Disambiguation | Only if there is a risk of confusion: who you are not, such as a business with the same name |
| Coverage of you | Outside sources such as the press, a chamber or a trade association |
| FAQ | Optional, visible on the page |
| Official profiles and identifiers | Required: Google Business Profile, social accounts, registers, each with a link |
| Status and sources | Evidence, plus the review note with reviewer and date |
On top of that comes the matching Schema.org type as JSON-LD. It contains only what is visible on the page. The review note says who checked the facts and when. In JSON-LD that goes into the fields reviewedBy and lastReviewed. The standard recommends a review every three to six months, and after twelve at the latest. How to mark up the data is covered in Structured data (schema) explained.
What the evidence shows, and what it does not
Most writing on the topic comes from vendors who sell GEO. That includes this article. We know of no independent, controlled study on whether grounding pages work.
Carsten Feller has published concrete figures. He went through his server logs for March to April 2026. PerplexityBot fetched his fact page 18 times. Bytespider came to 5 fetches, OAI-SearchBot and ClaudeBot to 2 each, and GPTBot to one. In the same period, his llms.txt got zero requests from AI crawlers. Feller stresses that the log only shows what gets crawled. The effect on the answers remains open.
There is pointed criticism as well, collected by Homepage Helden. Kai Spriestersbach argues that retrieval systems choose by relevance and authority, whatever the page type. He adds that language models usually give outside sources more weight than what a business says about itself. The British blog Grumpy Old SEO warns about stale details. A fact page that has fallen out of date becomes a particularly clean source for a wrong answer.
We therefore rate reviews and mentions on other sites higher than any page of your own. A grounding page makes sure your own facts are right in one place.
Who it is worth it for
It helps most where an AI can easily get things mixed up. We see three cases often.
- A name that is easy to confuse. There is a business with the same name in the region, or your name is also a well-known word.
- No shop address. If your Google Business Profile only lists a service area, the AI has no fixed place for you.
- Wrong details in AI answers. The AI gives old opening hours, the wrong owner or services you do not offer. How to check this yourself is in How to check whether AI already recommends your business.
For everyone else, a factual about page is often enough. webgras sees it the same way: if your about page is clear, factual and stable, you do not need a separate grounding page. What belongs on a good about page is in The about page that sells and ranks.
Common mistakes
- sameAs points to another entity. A link to the wrong Wikidata item or to a namesake’s profile ties you to someone else’s facts. Every sameAs has to describe your business and nobody else.
- JSON-LD with details nobody can see. Anything that exists only in the code breaks the standard. Everything in the markup belongs visibly on the page too.
- A review date without a review. A fresh date over old facts misleads people and machines alike. Set the review date only after a real check. Change dateModified only when the content actually changes.
- Marketing language. “The best tradesperson in the region” is an opinion. A fact page needs what can be checked: since when, where and for whom.
- Several entities side by side. When a business, its owner and two brands share a page as equals, it is unclear what the page is about. Put one entity at the centre and link the others to it.
What we have checked since July
We have used the term grounding page since November 2026. The checks behind it have been part of our audits since July. They are part of every audit and every re-audit.
| Since | What we check |
|---|---|
| 20 July 2026 | Whether the business, its owner and its profiles are linked in the structured data through @id and sameAs. We also look for businesses with the same name that an AI could confuse with yours. |
| 22 July 2026 | Whether your business has a shop, only a service area, or both. That decides what your Google Business Profile should show. |
| 27 July 2026 | Whether sameAs points beyond social networks to the Google Business Profile, Wikidata and chamber and trade directories. |
| 22 September 2026 | Which of our pages Bing cites in AI answers, and through which grounding queries. It started when Bing cited us nine times on 19 and 20 September. |
A grounding page brings together what these checks ask one by one. That is why we built one for ourselves and for our own projects.
How we do it ourselves
You can see what this looks like for us on our own fact page. The guide Build a grounding page walks through it step by step. Our news note on standard 2.0 sums up what changed.
We had a reason of our own. In October 2026, ChatGPT twice attached another business’s place listing to our studio. On 20 and on 25 October it was a different business each time. Our Google Business Profile lists only a service area. Whether a fact page changes that is still open.
Status and sources
We re-read every statement about the standard at its source on 6 November 2026. The standard moves quickly, with six versions since November 2025. If you are reading this much later, check the project’s changelog.
- Grounding Page Standard, home page, Grounding Page Project
- Changelog of the standard, version 2.0 of 26 October 2026
- FAQ on the standard, Grounding Page Project
- Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft Bing, 10 February 2026
- AI features and your website, Google Search Central
- Grounding Pages: warum Faktenseiten für AI Visibility entscheidend sind, Carsten Feller (German)
- Grounding Page 2026, Homepage Helden (German)
- Grounding Page für die Website, webgras (German)
Frequently asked questions
Does a small business need a grounding page?
Usually a factual about page with name, area, owner, services and official profiles is enough. A separate page pays off when AI mixes you up or says wrong things about you.
Will ChatGPT name me if I have a grounding page?
Nobody can promise that. According to the project, no provider has committed to taking the standard into account. The page guarantees neither retrieval nor citation or recommendation.
Is the Grounding Page Standard an official standard?
It comes from Hanns Kronenberg and is maintained by the Grounding Page Project, an open initiative. The W3C, Schema.org and Google are not behind it.
Should the fact page be set to noindex?
Keep it indexable. Google only uses pages in AI Overviews that are indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet.
How often should I review the facts?
The standard recommends every three to six months, and after twelve at the latest. Only change the review date when you have actually checked.
Do I need an llms.txt for it?
Not for the grounding page. The project considers it unnecessary here, because Google Search does not use such files. What an llms.txt can do otherwise is covered in llms.txt and Content-Signal.