How to Create a Wikidata Item for Your Company: Notability, Disclosure and Sourced Statements

What Is a Wikidata Item?

A Wikidata item is a page in Wikidata, with a permanent ID beginning with “Q”, that holds a label, a short description, aliases and sourced statements about one thing.

Wikidata's Help:Items page says items represent “all the things in human knowledge, including topics, concepts, and objects”, and warns that an item is not the Wikidata version of a Wikipedia article. Information is recorded as statements: a property paired with a value, such as inception (P571): 2014, which can carry qualifiers, references and ranks (Help:Statements). Wikidata describes itself as “not a database that stores facts about the world, but a secondary knowledge base that collects and links to references to such knowledge”, so a statement records what a source says. Structured data in items is published under the CC0 public-domain dedication (Wikidata:Copyright), which means anyone can reuse it, and anyone can edit it.

Two points shape everything below. First, an item has to meet Wikidata:Notability; Help:Items puts it plainly: “Most importantly do not create Items for promotional purposes.” Second, if you work for, own or are paid by the company, you have a conflict of interest, and paid contributions must be disclosed under the Wikimedia Terms of Use. For how Wikidata's bar compares with Wikipedia's, see whether Wikidata is easier to get into than Wikipedia.

How to Create a Wikidata Item at a Glance

Time: one to two hours of editing once sources are gathered (our estimate); a request at Requests for new items waits for a volunteer and has no published turnaround. Tools: a web browser and a free Wikimedia account. Cost: none; Wikidata charges nothing to create or edit items. Skill level: beginner for the form itself; judging notability and sourcing takes care.

What You Need Before Starting

• Several independent, published sources about the company: news articles, trade-press coverage, books or official records that someone outside the company could check. Press releases, your own site and social profiles do not establish notability (Wikidata:Self-promotion).
• The company's exact legal or official name, common name and any former names.
• Verifiable basic facts with a source for each: founding date, headquarters city, country, industry, founders.
• The official website URL and the exact usernames or IDs of official profiles you intend to list.
• Any registry identifiers you hold, such as an LEI.
• A decision about who will edit, and the disclosure that person must make (Step 3).

Step 1: Test Your Company Against Wikidata's Notability Policy

Open Wikidata:Notability and check whether your company meets at least one of its three criteria before you touch anything else. An item that fails all three can be deleted, and the deletion discussion is public.

The three criteria, quoted from the policy as of October 2026. An item is acceptable if it meets at least one:

1. Sitelink: it “contains at least one valid sitelink to a page on Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, or Wikimedia Commons.” User pages and drafts do not count.
2. Identifiable entity with references: it “refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references.”
3. Structural need: it “fulfills a structural need, for example: it is needed to make statements made in other items more useful.”

Why it matters: most companies without a Wikipedia article rely on criterion 2, which the policy says is “intentionally left a bit vague”, with “the final decision” left to the community. A request for comment on reforming the policy was open in October 2026; it records that some editors read criterion 2 as allowing almost anything while others read it much more strictly, and that administrators report difficulty applying it consistently. Its current policy proposal, not adopted as of October 6, 2026, would go further: “In order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, creating an Item about yourself, your close relatives or your business is not permitted.”

How to apply it to a company: list sources that are independent of the company and published where anyone can check them. The Wikidata:Self-promotion essay (an essay, not policy) says “independent coverage in reliable sources is required to firmly establish notability”, that a business-registry listing “does not by itself make a company notable”, and offers a rule of thumb of “at least three independent, reputable sources that provide substantial coverage of you, not by you, not quoting you, and not merely mentioning you in passing.”

Expected result: either a list of independent sources you can cite, or a clear answer that it is too soon. How to verify: ask whether a stranger with no access to your company could confirm each fact from your list. Common mistake: counting your website, press releases, directory listings or social profiles as evidence of notability. The essay names “personal websites, social-media pages, personal blogs, press releases, native advertising, and marketing materials” as not meeting the requirement.

Step 2: Search Wikidata for an Existing Item

Search Wikidata for your company before creating anything, because duplicates are merged rather than kept and an existing item may already hold your Q-ID. Help:Items says to make sure “Wikidata does not already have a page for that item” before creating one.

How to search:

• Type the company name, former names and common abbreviations into the search box on wikidata.org. Check the descriptions in the results, since several items can share a label.
• If the company has a Wikipedia article in any language, use Special:ItemByTitle with the language code of the wiki (for example en) and the exact article title.
• Search by statement with the haswbstatement keyword documented in Help:Extension:WikibaseCirrusSearch. For example, haswbstatement:P2002=yourhandle finds items already holding that X username, and haswbstatement:P1278= followed by your LEI finds items holding that LEI.

Expected result: no matching item, or a Q-ID for an item about your company. If an item exists: do not create a second one. The Requests for deletions page says “duplicate items should be merged, not deleted”, and Help:Merge warns that merges need certainty the subjects are the same. If you have a conflict of interest, request changes on the item's talk page with the {{Edit request}} template, as the Self-promotion essay suggests. Common mistake: searching only the current brand name and missing an item created under a former or legal name.

Step 3: Choose Your Route and Disclose Any Conflict of Interest or Payment

Decide who will create the item and make any required disclosure before the first edit. Disclosure is not optional for paid work, and Wikidata's community discourages people from creating items about their own organization.

Paid editing is a Terms of Use requirement. The Wikimedia Terms of Use say: “You must disclose each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.” Disclosure can be made on your user page, on the talk page accompanying the paid contributions, or in the edit summary. Wikidata's own Disclosure of paid editing policy says a user “has to disclose the name of every organization (regardless of legal status) and individual that pays the user money for contributing to Wikidata”, either in plain text or with the {{PaidContributions}} template on the user page, and that a warning is “not mandatory”: under the policy's enforcement section, “It is not necessary for editors to receive a warning prior to a block if the administrator believes that there is a clear indication that the editor is disruptive.” This covers employees editing as part of their job, agencies and freelancers. Wikidata:Autobiography adds that anyone editing “for reward (as part of your job, for money, or for some other consideration)” must declare it.

Conflict of interest goes further than payment. Wikidata has no formal conflict-of-interest policy; its Conflict of interest page points to the Terms of Use, the paid-editing policy and the Self-promotion essay. That essay says creating an item about “yourself, your organisation, or your work is a form of self-promotion and is strongly discouraged”, and that items failing notability “are likely to be deleted”, which it describes as disruption that can lead to a block. Wikidata:Autobiography says you “should not create an item about yourself unless you are sure that it fulfils the notability criteria.”

The route built for connected editors is Wikidata:Requests for new items. Its header says you may wish to request an item there if “you have a conflict of interest, such as requesting an item about yourself, your organisation, your company, or another entity you are closely connected to.” Requests must include evidence that the entity meets the notability policy.

Process: create an account and log in, then add a plain statement to your Wikidata user page naming your relationship to the company and, if paid, every employer, client and beneficiary. Expected result: a user page that states the connection. How to verify: open your user page while logged out and confirm the statement is visible. Common mistake: an agency disclosing only itself. The Terms of Use require the client and intended beneficiary to be named too; our explainer on paying someone to edit Wikipedia covers the same rule on Wikipedia.

Step 4: Submit a Request or Create the Item With a Neutral Label and Description

Create the item's three text fields, or ask an independent editor to, using the company's common name and a short, neutral description. These fields are what people see in search results and the entity suggester.

If you have a conflict of interest: add a new section at the bottom of Requests for new items with the proposed label and description, a sentence disclosing your connection, links to your independent sources, and the official website and identifiers. Sign the post. Sections there are archived automatically after 60 days, according to the page header, so a request can close without action.

If you are creating it directly: open Special:NewItem (Help:Items calls the menu link “Create a new Item”), choose the language, enter a label and description, and click “Create”.

• Label: “the most common name that the item would be known by”, no more than 250 characters, without disambiguation in brackets (Help:Label).
• Description: a phrase, usually two to twelve words, starting lowercase, with no initial “a”, “an” or “the” and no full stop. Help:Description says to “avoid terminology that could be interpreted as promotional”. For example, “software company based in Leeds, England” fits; “leading provider of innovative solutions” does not.
• Aliases: former names, legal name and abbreviations, added under “Also known as” (Help:Aliases).

Expected result: a new page at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q followed by a number. How to verify: the Q-ID appears in the page heading and the URL. Help:Label says no two items may have both the same label and the same description, so a clash means you should check the other item first. Common mistake: writing a slogan as the description, or creating the bare item and leaving; the Deletion policy lists an item that “contains no data, or is blank” as deletable.

Step 5: Add Core Statements That Describe the Company

Add statements that say what the company is, where it is and when it began, using the properties below. Help:Statements describes the process: scroll to the Statements section, click “add”, type the property name, pick it from the suggester, enter the value and save.

Property IDs and labels were checked against Wikidata's own property pages on October 6, 2026 (for example P31, P856, P571, P159, P452). Values that point to other items must use items that exist; if your industry or city lacks one, pick the nearest existing item rather than creating new items about your own business.

Expected result: a Statements section listing each property and value. How to verify: look for a constraint warning icon beside each statement; Help:Property constraints portal explains that constraints are hints about how a property should be used and that violations are reported on the item page. Common mistake: adding opinions, awards with no independent source, revenue claims from a pitch deck or product lists; Wikidata says it is not “a place for self-promotion, or advertising/marketing” (What Wikidata is not).

Step 6: Add a Reference to Every Factual Statement

Add a reference under each statement, using an independent published source wherever one exists. Wikidata's Verifiability page, a proposed policy or guideline that has not been adopted, summarizes the expectation: “All statements on Wikidata must be supported by a source. Unsourced statements, and statements not supported by the source provided, will be removed.”

How to reference a web page, per Help:Sources: click to add a reference under the statement, then add

• reference URL (P854): the URL of the article or page;
• title (P1476): the page title;
• publication date (P577): when it was published, or retrieved (P813) with the date you read it if no date is shown;
• optionally archive URL (P1065) and archive date (P2960), so the source survives a dead link.

If the publication already has its own item, Help:Sources says to cite it with stated in (P248). Wikipedia articles are not acceptable sources for statements, and references marked only “imported from Wikimedia project” are not counted as sourced.

Your own website: Wikidata:Verifiability says self-published information is acceptable for statements about its author “when ... the information is clearly not self-serving”. Your site can back a founding date or headquarters address; it cannot establish that the company is notable. Expected result: each statement shows a reference count. How to verify: expand each statement and confirm the reference supports that exact value. Common mistake: citing a press release syndicated across several sites as several sources.

Step 7: Add External Identifiers and Official Accounts

Add identifier properties that link the item to other records of the same company. Help:Sources says statements that point to an external database or authority file which allows easy verification do not need a separate source, because the value itself links to the record.

Formats above are from each property's description and link format on Wikidata, checked October 6, 2026. For what these registries do and do not claim about search, see our report on whether identifier registries affect search visibility.

Expected result: identifiers listed in their own section near the bottom of the item; Help:Statements notes that external-identifier properties are displayed below other statements. How to verify: click each value; it should open the correct official profile or registry record. Common mistake: listing personal accounts of staff, or a fan account, as the company's official profile.

Step 8: Watch the Item and Respond to Review

Add the item to your watchlist and check its history and talk page over the following weeks. Other editors may change, merge or nominate it, and the outcome is decided by the community.

What review looks like: the Deletion policy says items may be deleted when they do not meet notability, are vandalism, contain no data, for “any other common-sense reason for deletion not listed above”, or after a discussion at Requests for deletions reaches consensus. That page states: “Items that do not meet Wikidata's notability policy can be deleted.” Only administrators can delete items (Help:Items). The Self-promotion essay notes that self-promotion is not itself a deletion reason: “It may, however, cause an item to receive additional scrutiny.”

If the item is nominated: reply in the discussion with independent sources and your disclosed connection; do not blank the item, which the Requests for deletions page says not to do. If it is deleted: do not recreate it. The Guide to requests for undeletion (an essay) tells people trying to reverse deletion of an item about their own organization to “stop now and walk away”, saying such requests are rejected in the overwhelming majority of cases and produce a permanent public discussion. Common mistake: arguing that the item is needed to improve search results; the same guide lists “the need to improve search result ranking” as something not to include.

How to Verify It Worked

• The item exists: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q plus your number loads while logged out and shows your label and description.
• It is findable: searching the company name on wikidata.org returns the item, and haswbstatement:P856= plus your exact website URL returns it.
• Statements are sourced: every non-identifier statement shows at least one reference.
• No constraint warnings remain unexplained on the item page (constraint reports are shown to logged-in users).
• It has not been nominated: the item's Q-ID does not appear on Requests for deletions, and the item's history shows no deletion request.
• Disclosure is visible: your user page states the connection or payment.

Surviving review does not mean anything has changed in Google or in AI answers. Wikidata's Self-promotion essay says “Wikidata does not control Google's Knowledge Panels”, and nothing in Wikidata's documentation promises that search engines or AI systems will use an item. If Google already shows a panel for your company, our guide to claiming your Google Knowledge Panel covers Google's own verification route. Our guide to checking what AI says about your company describes how to measure that separately.

How to Choose the Right Route

The last row is not a consolation prize. Requests for new items notes that if you want a URL for schema.org sameAs, “you can use any applicable URL; Wikidata is not a requirement.” Our guide to adding Organization schema markup covers that route.

Common Problems and Fixes

What Not to Do

• Do not edit for pay without disclosure. It breaches the Terms of Use and Wikidata policy, and Wikidata's paid-editing policy says a warning is not necessary before a block “if the administrator believes that there is a clear indication that the editor is disruptive.” Name every employer, client and beneficiary on the user page before editing.
• Do not create an item for a company with no independent coverage. It will likely be deleted, wasting volunteer time and leaving a public record. Build coverage first, or use your own site and schema markup.
• Do not write promotional labels, descriptions or statements. They invite scrutiny and removal. Use plain, neutral, sourced facts.
• Do not recreate a deleted item or open repeated appeals. The undeletion guide says “Do not recreate the item, and do not open multiple appeals.” Wait for new independent sources.
• Do not create items for your products, executives or offices to prop up the main item. Each must meet notability separately. Add only what is needed and sourced.
• Do not remove sourced statements you dislike. The Self-promotion essay and Wikidata:Autobiography both say not to. Raise it on the talk page or Project chat.
• Do not buy or sell a Wikidata item as a route to a Knowledge Panel or AI visibility. No Wikidata page promises either, and the Self-promotion essay says Knowledge Panels are “not a valid reason to create an item.” See our explainer on the Google Knowledge Panel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Methodology

This guide is built from Wikidata policy, guideline, help and essay pages and the Wikimedia Terms of Use, all read on October 6, 2026 through the Wikimedia sites' public interfaces. Property IDs, labels, data types and formats were checked through Wikidata's API on the same date. We did not create, edit or request a Wikidata item for this guide, so interface labels quoted here come from Wikidata's help pages rather than our own use; where help pages disagree (Help:Items says “publish” and Help:Statements says “save”), we describe the action generically. Several sources are essays or proposed policies or guidelines rather than adopted policy, and we label them as such. The notability policy was under a reform discussion in October 2026 and may change. The time estimate is ours.

1. official Wikidata, Wikidata:Notability (policy). Read October 6, 2026.
2. official Wikidata, Requests for comment/Notability policy reform. Read October 6, 2026.
3. official Wikidata, Help:Items. Read October 6, 2026.
4. official Wikidata, Help:Statements. Read October 6, 2026.
5. official Wikidata, Help:Sources. Read October 6, 2026.
6. official Wikidata, Wikidata:Verifiability (proposed policy or guideline). Read October 6, 2026.
7. official Wikidata, Help:Label (proposed policy or guideline), Help:Description (guideline) and Help:Aliases. Read October 6, 2026.
8. official Wikimedia Foundation, Terms of Use, section “Paid Contributions Without Disclosure”. Read October 6, 2026.
9. official Wikidata, Wikidata:Disclosure of paid editing (policy) and Wikidata:Conflict of interest (disambiguation page). Read October 6, 2026.
10. official Wikidata, Wikidata:Self-promotion (essay) and Wikidata:Autobiography. Read October 6, 2026.
11. official Wikidata, Wikidata:Requests for new items. Read October 6, 2026.
12. official Wikidata, Wikidata:Deletion policy (policy), Requests for deletions and Guide to requests for undeletion (essay). Read October 6, 2026.
13. official Wikidata, Help:Merge, Help:Property constraints portal, What Wikidata is not and Wikidata:Copyright. Read October 6, 2026.
14. official MediaWiki, Help:Extension:WikibaseCirrusSearch (haswbstatement search). Read October 6, 2026.
15. official Wikidata property pages P31, P17, P571, P159, P452, P112, P1448, P856, P2002, P4264, P2013, P2003, P2397, P1278, P1320, P213, P854 and P248. Checked October 6, 2026.
16. official Wikidata, Wikidata Query Service, item counts for P1320, P2002, P2013, P2003, P2397, P1278 and P4264. Read October 10, 2026.