The “About” page: yesterday neglected, tomorrow the judge of your digital identity?

Ah! The “About” page…

This marketing obligation is usually relegated to the bottom of the to-do list, somewhere between “update legal information” and “check for dead links”. That catch-all page you don’t know what to do with, where you hesitate between telling the heroic story of the founders, displaying obsolete team photos, or settling for a generic paragraph hastily written by a dilettante intern. That famous page you visit once every three years, when you change managing director or move offices…

However, at Waikay, we believe that this all-too-often neglected page is poised to become a fully-fledged strategic element of your digital presence in the age of artificial intelligence. Arms falling off? Pick them up, they may yet come in handy.

It turns out that several of our observations using our analysis tool converge towards this hypothesis. When it comes to identifying you and finding out who you are, LLMs seem to pay particular attention to their “About” pages. These same pages, which many haven’t updated in months or even years, are now consulted attentively, analyzed scrupulously and enter right into LLM training data. Logically, when regurgitated by pure LLMs or search engines augmented by their conversational assistants, they help shape the perception of your brand among many users.

Now that ChatGPT, Claude, Google SGE and consort have established themselves as intermediaries between you and your audience, it seems reasonable to ask how we can prevent these artificial intelligences from constructing an incomplete or erroneous representation of your brand, for lack of adequate information to sink their teeth into. And if there’s one page where information about you is concentrated, it’s this one.

This article offers some food for thought about the “About” page, the poor relation of website architecture. We’re convinced, and we have the evidence to back it up, that it could play a much more important role than you think in defining your digital identity to LLMs. Although the current state of knowledge in this field is still in its infancy, there are a few clues that deserve our attention.

Does the advent of LLMs mean revenge for About pages?

How LLMs understand your brand: an analysis of information sources

To understand the importance of the “About” page, it’s essential to understand how LLMs construct their representation of your brand. In theory, the situation is simple: they use all data, direct or indirect, referring to you. They do this primarily from their training data, but if need be, in certain cases and depending on the language models, directly online. In both cases, the problem is the same: they base their answers on data available on the Web. But exactly which data and which pages do they use? The mystery remains, and we’re actively working to unravel it.

LLMs’ preferred sources

It all started with the refinement of our waikay.io analysis tool.

We asked LLMs the following question: “What do you know about brand X, Y or Z?” and sought to analyze the data they were using to answer it. To date, we’ve come up with a list of over 17,000 URLs! We’ll spare you the full results, and here, in essence, is the general profile of these sources consulted by LLMs. It’s quite instructive and revealing:

• 1 274 are home pages
• 966 are “About” pages
• 864 are review pages
• 707 are product pages
• 500 are “How to…” pages
• 208 are contact pages…

The first thing to note is that, with 12,501 URLs left unmentioned in our results, we can see how LLMs are firing on all cylinders to obtain their information. They don’t limit themselves to a single page to understand a brand, but build a composite representation from multiple types of pages not mentioned here: press articles, interviews, FAQs, social network profiles, forum discussions, professional directories, user manuals…

Secondly, and by no means least, home pages and About pages are the most frequently used to answer the question. That said, 1,274 home pages and 966 “About” pages out of a total of 17,000 URLs may not seem like much to you. You’d be wrong…

To put these figures into perspective, let’s imagine the web as an immense library containing billions of pages. In this library, LLMs consult only a limited number of works to form an opinion about your brand. Of these selected volumes, almost 13% come from just two specific departments: home pages and “About” pages. That’s a lot!

For those for whom numbers speak louder than letters, let’s take another example:

It’s as if, in a listed company, two minority shareholders together held 13% of the shares. In the business world, such a concentration is considered a significant position of influence, often sufficient to secure a seat on the board and influence strategic decisions.

In the almost infinite universe of the web, the fact that two specific types of pages account for such a high proportion of the sources consulted reveals their disproportionate importance in the LLM understanding algorithm. This concentration is no coincidence, but probably reflects a preference for those pages that are considered particularly reliable and informative about brand identity.

Indeed, if we consider that a brand generally has only one “About” page and one home page, (unlike product pages, which can be numerous), this figure suggests that these pages are over-represented in the sources consulted by LLMs.

Why LLMs prefer the “About” page

If LLMs attach particular importance to the “About” page, it’s undoubtedly because it generally contains all the information defining your brand’s identity (history, mission, values, expertise) in a concentrated format. It’s therefore a primary and significant source. The fact that you yourself provide this information about your own brand undoubtedly tends to make it “official” and constitutes an element of credibility making this dedicated page a reliable primary source. Unlike other pages where this information is implicit, scattered and ultimately diluted, the “About” page presents this data in a dense, explicit and often structured way. What’s more, its content is stable over time, as it is rarely modified. This makes it a more reliable reference for the brand’s fundamental characteristics.

What’s the difference between the home page and the About page?

We believe that, in the long term, LLMs will rely more on “About” pages than on home pages. Here’s why:
1. Information-dense content – “About” pages generally contain more factual, contextual information about your company than home pages, which are often more promotional and visual.
2. Declarative intent – On an “About” page, you introduce yourself explicitly, whereas the home page often serves as a navigation interface and sales showcase.
3. Structured narrative – “About” pages generally offer a coherent narrative about your identity, making it easier for LLMs to understand your positioning. Indeed, more than search engines, LLMs rely on detailed semantic and contextual understanding.
4. Fewer promotional elements – Home pages often contain slogans, temporary offers or marketing messages that don’t necessarily define the essence of the company, and which detract from your message.
5. More substantial textual content – About pages are generally richer in text, enabling LLMs to better grasp nuances and context.
6. Permanence of information – The content of “About” pages tends to be more stable over time, offering a more reliable reference than home pages, which change frequently.

Home pages remain important for understanding current business priorities and core offerings, but to establish a fundamental understanding of what a company is, its history, mission and positioning, LLMs rely heavily on “About” pages as a source of authority.

The consequences of a poorly optimized “About” page for LLMs

With this in mind, let’s think a little further. The absence of a well-structured About page, or its lack of optimization, can lead to several critical problems in your algorithmic representation.

Risks of active misinformation and confusion
In the absence of a clear and comprehensive “About” page, LLMs may refer to potentially inaccurate, outdated or malicious third-party sources to identify you. This inaccurate information can then be presented as factual to users querying these systems about your company. This fragmented and inconsistent representation of your identity, based on disparate elements from various sources over which you have no control, generates a significant risk of error when generating the response.

Misinterpretation of context
An incomplete “About” page does not allow LLMs to correctly understand your business sector, positioning or specific expertise. This contextual confusion can lead to misinterpretation of all your content.

Loss of visibility opportunities
In a context where search engines are integrating more and more generative functionalities, and LLMs are tending to replace them outright, an imprecise representation in their training data could cause you to lose visibility in synthesized results or automatically generated extracts.

Essential elements of an “About” page optimized for LLMs

To maximize the effectiveness of your “About” page as an authoritative source of information for LLMs, certain key elements need to be included and strategically structured. In general, be comprehensive and explicit but concise, providing enough information without drowning important points in superfluous content. Choose a style that authentically reflects your brand, rather than content overloaded with keywords. Update this page to reflect your company’s evolution.

Here are a few points to develop carefully:

1. Clear and precise identification of the company
– Exact name of the company, including its legal form
– Date of creation and significant historical milestones
– Precise geographical location (head office and any branches)
– Clearly defined main and secondary business sectors

3. Explicit mission, products and positioning
– Target audience or market segments precisely identified (individuals, professionals, institutions…)
– Concise and specific mission statement
– Precise and clear categorization of products and services offered
– Positioning in relation to competitors

4. Documented expertise and credibility
– Professional qualifications of management team
– Relevant certifications and accreditations
– Significant professional affiliations
– Background and experience of founders or key experts
– Notable publications, research or patents
– Recent awards and honors

5. Verifiable factual data
– Key figures on company size (number of employees, customers, etc.)
– Quantifiable achievements (projects completed, users served, etc.)
– Performance and results (where relevant and verifiable)
– Significant customer or partner references (with their agreement, of course)
– Tech stack, integrations, and other useful technical details

6. Values and commitments
– Explicitly stated core corporate values
– Ethical or societal commitments
– Concrete social responsibility initiatives
– Long-term vision and strategic objectives

More generally, and without ordering yourself around:

• Go beyond products and services by explaining the problems you solve and how you approach them specifically.
• Contextualize your activities by situating your work within a broader framework (industry trends, societal needs, technological developments).
• Detail your methodological approach where relevant, rather than focusing solely on results.
• Show how your activities are evolving to meet changing market needs.
• Include concrete examples or mini-case studies that demonstrate your expertise in action.
• Link your current activities to your history and future vision to create a coherent narrative.

How to be explicit rather than implicit?

Since you’re asked to be precise and explicit, let’s be that way too…
Be rigorous in your formulations, leaving no room for doubt. Try to anticipate the risks of error or confusion that your words might induce. Don’t hesitate to be specific, but don’t get bogged down in unnecessary detail. Here are a few examples of wording to be favored:

Direct and unambiguous formulations:
– ✅ “We are a design agency specializing exclusively in UX/UI for mobile applications”
– ❌ “We create impactful digital experiences” (too vague)

Clear exclusionary statements:
– ✅ “Important: we don’t develop the backend code of applications, we only focus on the user interface”
– ❌ Let the reader deduce your limits of intervention

Precise definitions of terms:
– ✅ “By ‘sustainable solutions’, we specifically mean products whose carbon footprint is 50% lower than the industry average”
– ❌ Use terms like “sustainable” or “innovative” without defining them

Contextualization without inference:
– ✅ “Although our team includes former cybersecurity consultants, our company offers no services in this field”
– ❌ Mention related skills without clarifying their application

Explicit service hierarchy:
– ✅ “Our main activity (80% of our projects) is the creation of e-commerce sites. Secondarily, we offer SEO optimization services”
– ❌ Listing your services without indicating their relative importance

Factual assertions vs. positioning:
– ✅ “Founded in 2018, our company currently has 27 employees in 3 countries”
– ❌ “A growing team with an international presence” (too imprecise)

Explicit geographical delimitation:
– ✅ “We only serve customers based in mainland France and do not offer our services internationally”
– ❌ Mention only “based in Paris” without specifying your scope of intervention

LLMs tend to make inferences based on patterns they’ve observed elsewhere. By being explicit about these fundamental aspects, you considerably reduce the risk of them generating incorrect information about your company.

Say what you do, and… what you don’t do

On an About page, it goes without saying that it’s important to clearly present what you do. However, in the context of optimization for LLMs, for whom semantic context is paramount, it’s probably a good idea to approach this presentation a little differently, by including – however unintuitively – possible clarifications on what you don’t do.

Every day, we are horrified to see LLMs falsely and unscrupulously attributing products or services to a company that doesn’t offer them, or confusing the names of structures. As they have an unfortunate tendency to extrapolate, they can make connections that could go beyond your actual scope of activity. Clarification would make it possible to ostensibly establish the limits of your expertise, products and services, to reduce the risk of misinterpretation. Admittedly, it would be a pity – and the word is a weak one – if your brand were associated with related but distinct activities for which you offer nothing. Or to be confused with a sausage maker if you’re a geothermal expert. That said, we have nothing against sausages.

How to integrate it effectively into the “About” page?

– Dedicated section – Create a “What we don’t do” or “Our scope of work” section.
– Constructive wording – Rather than simple negations, explain why you’ve chosen to focus on certain areas.
– Helpful redirection – Where relevant, suggest alternatives for needs outside your scope.
– Contextualization – Link these details to your specific expertise and positioning.

This proactive strategy anticipates LLMs’ natural tendency to hallucinate.

Some technical ideas for optimizing the About page for LLMs

Beyond content, certain technical aspects can significantly improve the interpretation of your “About” page by LLMs. Here we return to the basics of SEO:

Clear semantic structure
Use a logical hierarchical structure with appropriate H1, H2, H3 tags that clearly reflect the organization of your content. LLMs are particularly sensitive to this hierarchical structure, which facilitates information extraction.

Appropriate schema.org markup
Implement relevant schema.org tags such as Organization, LocalBusiness or Person as appropriate. This structured markup helps LLMs to categorize and correctly interpret the information presented.

html Copy <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Concise description of your company", "foundingDate": "2010-01-01", "description": "Consize ", "founder": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Founder's name" }, … } </script>

Strategic lexical consistency
Use consistent, industry-specific vocabulary, ensuring that you maintain the same terminology across your entire digital presence. This lexical consistency helps LLMs make reliable connections between different sources about you.

Accessible format for algorithmic analysis
Choose a clear text format rather than images containing text, or overly creative layouts that could hinder LLMs’ ability to extract information. Well-structured text in standard HTML remains the most effective format for algorithmic understanding.

Waiting for llm.txt pages

Until the llm.txt page project becomes a standard, as robot.txt files are today, we don’t recommend including elements intended solely for LLMs, with no consideration for human users. Being designed to serve human users, we can deduce that their objective is to understand what is relevant to them. Content that has been created solely for LLMs without any value for users is likely to be misinterpreted. What’s more, search engines penalize content that appears artificial, of no real value, or designed solely for algorithms rather than users. LLMs are likely to do the same. Especially since, obviously, obviously artificial content could damage the perception of your brand by human visitors.

The best approach is to create a complete, authentic About page that clearly presents your company with all the elements mentioned above, is logically structured with distinct sections, uses natural, accurate language and offers substantial, useful information.

This strategy will satisfy both human users and LLMs. Because the information that helps an LLM understand your company is usually also the information that human visitors are looking for. So don’t add artificial or hidden elements, and go for completeness and precision!