Google Knowledge Graph Search Integration
On May 16th, 2012, Google announced their Knowledge Graph integration into Google search results for some people, and some English phrases.
Not everyone in our office had access to Knowledge Graph, luckily my Google profile did have access.
For example, here is a search for “The Sun”:
First you get the regular results for “The Sun,” but notice in the right column, there is a link to find out if you meant to search for the celestial object that lights our world and gives life to all known beings.
If you click the link, you get the following results that provides you a short list of information about the sun, including data points like “surface temperature,” “rotation speed,” “distance to earth,” “mass,” etc.
If you click the bold information titles, you go into a deeper search discovery mode that provides results on information related to the original query, however it hopefully reveals deeper relationships, such as, did you know one Jupiter year is very close to the sunspot cycle. Very interesting if they are related, and enough to get someone to want to know more.
Next, you’ll see that Google’s semantic search results for the Sun’s surface temperature has references if you click “show details.”
Now that you can see the sources of the information, you can see which sites that Google is pulling data from. Since 5,778 degrees Kelvin was referenced twice out of the four sources 5,778 was the chosen number. However, if you think this is inaccurate, you can let Google know using their feedback links below the source citations.
I think this is a great step for Google, however a few questions pop up in my mind:
- Will your site get more traffic if you’re cited by Google’s semantic search results?
- Will users tend to never leave Google’s property if they get the “good enough” answer directly on the SERP?
- How will the knowledge graph affect ad placement, or ad delivery?
- Will certain types of SEO emerge with the purpose to become the cited source in the Knowledge Graph results?
