what makes Google different?

More money and lawyers and proxy ("plausibly deniable" ) crowd sourced scrapers to do it, than anyone else..

Their 'knowledge engine' results have yet to show anything that's outwith their own purchased content or freely available open source content.

I think it's unhelpful in the discussion for people to blur the lines between organic SERPs, content ownership and the current form of their knowledge engine, as usually there's a personal agenda or a biased opinion behind it.

Sure, we can speculate "what google will do", "what they're trying to do", but until there's an instance of "someone elses content" being used in their knowledge engine, I don't see the correlation between it and 3rd party (copyrighted) content.

Some of the negativity that's pushed around about Google's SERP's is getting quite boring to be honest. Google is a tool to meet needs and nothing more.

Though the cynic in me says Google will use wiki and other content much in the same way it used DMOZ in its early days, a springboard to greater things.

Actually, the last time I looked, Google was a profit making business


therefore the manner in which it obtains its profit will alway matter greatly, particularly where the said business commands so much of the web business environment that there is no room to bypass their business entirely

Then again , its being obvious for a while that not all are interested or concerned insofar friendly neighbour hood Lion king is chomping on someone elses touche

Good news, being reading this forum for a while and tis a fact that thingd change

Sure, we can speculate "what google will do", "what they're trying to do", but until there's an instance of "someone else's content" being used in their knowledge engine, I don't see the correlation between it and 3rd party (copyrighted) content.

This was a thread back in August, where I found them quite definitely using "someone else's content"..labeled by Google as "found" in their "carousel" which is part of their "knowledge graph"..
[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Leosghost at 9:57 pm (utc) on Oct 7, 2012]

Leo, I just read that thread... btw you may want to fix your link as it redirects to the home page.

I appreciate the point you make, images 'that may be subject to copyright', but in fairness that's not really related to the knowledge graph, it's images as you would get doing a regular image search. I think it's reasonably fair to say that the images appear because of old-school keyword prominence & matching rather than 'small world'-type knowledge graph results.

Thanks for "the heads" up on the link..
This isn't just like "image search" though.. a search on "images" gets you to the place the image came from ( which may or may not be the actual copyright owners page ) in one "hop"..

The "carousel" ( Google's "found" images system ) which G themselves say is part of their "knowledge graph" system..ads in[sic] ( sorry , couldn't help it ;)..two more pages ..with G adds[sic] ( sorry , couldn't help it, again ;) ..on G properties..before it gets you to the page the image came from..

>which G themselves say is part of their "knowledge graph"

where?

tbh isn't it a stretch to say the images are part of the 'knowledge graph'? At the most in your example of "things to do in paris", Google gets the intent, and the proper noun and most surely understands it's a location.... and can infer to display images it thinks are in the area of Paris, but the last part is more likely to do with plain old keyword matching rather than 'knowing' each individual image's relationship with paris. It's a bit like saying a moments glance at something is knowledge, without the thoughts behind it.

Though, this is perhaps getting off topic :o)

>which G themselves say is part of their "knowledge graph"

where?

[insidesearch.blogspot.fr...]

Read the page title in the "horse's mouth" link..pretty unambiguous ..according to Google, "carousel" is part of "knowledge graph" ..

btw..don't worry about the .fr in the link..it will revert to whatever language you are using..:)

Fair enough, it does explicitly say that it uses 'the collective intelligence of the Web'.

But what the knowledge graph isn't doing is displaying facts 'taken from the web'.

It does raise some more traditional philosophical questions about knowledge and understanding... but I'm going to be staunch in my opinion and stick to the idea that Google isn't doing anything new and special with those images, it just has a better way of displaying them (and one less click/search away).

If I had the resources to scrape the web right now, and had a method to discern that the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Versailles are all locations to visit in Paris.... what would be the problem? Displaying copyrighted images is neither here or there tbh, image owners have the powers to block Google from taking their content.

But going back to the 'the collective intelligence of the Web' aspect, I think we're hard pushed to say that Google is unfair in discerning 'knowledge' from the information it gathers online. I've certainly learned a thing or ten from knowing people in my life, but I would hope they wouldn't claim ownership of my wisdom.

I've certainly learned a thing or ten from knowing people in my life, but I would hope they wouldn't claim ownership of my wisdom.

Maybe not, but you'd be pretty offended if someone said "I've learned so much from knowing you! If only you had put it all in a book. Then I could have read the book and never had to waste time with you in person."

image owners have the powers to block Google from taking their content.

The problem with that "argument" is ..image owners can block Google from their images..but if their images are screen scraped by others either by individual webmasters "manually"..or "automated screencapture bots" or "crowd sourced" ( thinking of pinterest etc here )..then Google just takes them from their "new homes"..

G are doing this already when showing Pinterest higher for people's images then the originators..the Louvre example could well have been screen capped this way..
I went into more detail on this problem here [webmasterworld.com...]
msg:4499520 ..G do not use images from Getty etc in "carousel"..to do so would get them into major lawsuits with others who also have very deep legal pockets..

Google possesses, and uses the image comparison technology that they have, to identify the images from what I refer to as the "big dogs" of the various "image banks"..but they chose not to apply that same technology to the images in their indexes , to identify images "stolen" from smaller webmasters, and not use them in "carousel"..

Displaying copyrighted images is neither here or there tbh

Spoken like someone who does not make their living from creating copyright images, graphics and designs..one cannot scrape a snippet of an image..once one's image work is scraped / screen capped..it is entirely gone, there is no incentive to a searcher to click through 3 pages to get to the "source"..scraping images directly by the search engines can be blocked..the same search engines doing their scraping by proxy from the sites ( or crowd sourced mega sites ) of ones dishonest visitors, one cannot stop, because one would have to block all visitors..or control their computers via scripts ( which as I have posted elsewhere here, I have, but which reproduce the effects of malware, blocking "print screen" and access to cache, on all OSs /platforms does that )..or heavily watermark images so that they become too unattractive to be stolen..

Or use java and applets to load images into specially constructed pages or image secure browsers as one company does..not the friendliest of experiences for honest visitors..

Google could stop image theft easily with the tech they already have, and that would also prevent them using 3rd party copyright images "inadvertently" "found" on the web..in "classical image search" or "carousel"..but they don't, because they know how much more attractive images are than plain text, and wikipedia does not have enough copyright free images to feed "knowledge graph"..so Google steals our images that we have blocked direct access to Google from.. by proxy..

They even asked the UK government to allow them to be exempt from image copyright laws..if the images were "orphan"..meaning if Google could not "attribute" them..they neglected to mention that uploading them to Google strips meta data..and that their own image bots do the same..so any image without a watermark was "fair game" to be called "orphan" and used..they even made an alliance with the BBC and the large newspaper companies to be come the custodians of "orphaned" images..meaning that if one did not register ones images with them..one could not stop them using them as they wished..for knowledge graph or any other use..

More or less their "books" project ..but for images..

Those of us who are image makers, watch what the search engines and "big media" are doing very very closely ..and we pay special attention to Google..they are trying every way they can to get their hands on, and their ads around our IP,.. for free..even when we have expressly blocked them , as they said we should if we wanted to keep them out, directly..

(and one less click/search away)

It is one less click away at the beginning for the searcher ..but it moves the site upon which the image resides, 3 clicks further way from the searcher ..and each of those extra clicks has adwords around..whereas the classic Google image search ..doesn't..

Displaying copyrighted images is neither here or there tbh

Spoken like someone who does not make their living from creating copyright images, graphics and designs

With respect, I was referring to the idea that their knowledge graph and displayed images are not connected, and so it isn't relevant to the discussion... rather than blatantly disregarding any intellectual property rights.

They may be able to show relevant images but I would assume that it could not pick the Eiffel tower out of a photo, and even if it could, it would not be able to discern constituent 'parts' of it, like the facets of the graph. That's not to say it's impossible, I'm just saying the images are not connected to the graph.

They even asked the UK government

I'm sure plenty more could be said about their intent, I try to ignore it and just think of the user experience. Until Google are legally obliged to change their SERPs, they remain there for the user.

btw images aside, has their been any knowledge graph instances that can't be found here? [freebase.com] ... all of which can be downloaded and used as you see fit.

I think it's unhelpful in the discussion for people to blur the lines between organic SERPs, content ownership and the current form of their knowledge engine, as usually there's a personal agenda or a biased opinion behind it.

Sure, we can speculate "what google will do", "what they're trying to do", but until there's an instance of "someone elses content" being used in their knowledge engine, I don't see the correlation between it and 3rd party (copyrighted) content.

I have no personal bias one way or the other so please don't suggest I do. With permission I can/will link to 50+ search terms in which Wikipedia, Amazon, the NYTimes and many other public or non-profit information is scraped verbatim. It's not a "generic information" type of scraping, some of it contains opinion. We don't have to speculate as to wether or not they are scraping content, they are and I can prove it in spades.

As Google transitions out of search and into knowledge on their pages is it really ok for them to be using the very content from pages they will no longer send as much traffic to because of how they are displaying it?

It's also not just Google knowledge, take a look at an actor like Tom Hanks and look at their movie carousel. Look at the movie description, they are verbatim Wikipedia and IMDB for the most part right now. Did Wikipedia ok this without attribution? Did IMDB waive their copyright to their text? Google doesn't say.

Seriously, whatever your opinion of me is(heard it the first time, no need to tell me again)... is what Google has already done ok? Someone has to ask... I want to know more about where the writerless knowledge is coming from and why.

I don't complain that Google takes my snippets since they send me traffic but taking content and moving it onto their pages seems to be a bit of an overstep does it not? I can't be the only one who feels this way.

Edit: I'm well aware that many on WW don't like anti-google type language but please understand that this is a legitimate concern about a specific action of Googles and not a slam against the company. I was also told by a mod, after my post in the SEO forum was deleted, that I was free to post this discussion in THIS forum and so I have. Lets get over it and figure out if Google is going too far, before it's too late.(It would be a non-issue if they used their own content creators but that's apparently not the case).

>I have no personal bias one way or the other so please don't suggest I do

Sorry, just to be clear I wasn't commenting on your opinion but rather all the noise (in and outside of these forums) when it comes to Google strategy.

I assumed the discussion was how Google's knowledge graph would evolve without their own writers... I appreciate the particular forum that you've posted this thread in.

I'll sticky the mod and see if it's OK for you to post examples.

Thanks. One aspect of my question seems to be resolved at least in some searches. A generic location search such as "Hollywood" shows wikipedia information WITH a link to wikipedia tonight, the links were not there before and are still not there for many terms but it's a start. If Google gives proper attribution to all the knowledge they gather then they are following what has become fairly common practice and I'm a whole lot less concerned moving forward. My view is that proper attribution is never optional, even(especially?) for Google.

I wonder how they'll handle knowledge graphs with multiple sources of info, the credit lines could become numerous and add clutter.

To the OP, people don't notice much these days. Privacy today compared to 10 years ago? It's no comparison. People are numb and it doesn't get better. It only matters when something or someone affects enough people in a bad way. Then people take notice. Aside from that it's a collective shoulder shrug.

It's also going to come down to what Bing etc are doing. If they do, then they can do it also. It's always easy to say that we're just doing what they are doing, so why are you taking issue with us? That's an easy argument to make.

I'm a bit perplexed when I see movie show times and sports scores with expandable sections right on google to include more listings or scores. That's not even an issue it seems, but I personally didn't leave google's page and didn't have to got to espn, the movie theatre site, etc. That's my personal example. So obviously the theatre or espn get sooooo much organic traffic that they don't give a S about losing a couple visitors in this way. So you could say Google can easily appease any bitching that might come there way. You lose this, but your brand is gaining here. Would I bitch about it if I brought in 1 million uniques a day from Google organic traffic and then they decided to use some of my content on their homepage which cost me 5,000 uniques? Not a chance. It's the corporate way. What's good for me is good for you.

Site wise it's just a matter of choosing wisely now and putting the torch to ideas or content that at one point you thought was a good idea. Good ideas for survival in the quest for organic traffic are dwindling. At least for me anyways.

Regarding Google without writers? All they need is a few agreements and they are fine. The only ones recently who really bitched were the newspapers. Even they can easily be appeased with a throwback of some sort. Google has tablets so I'm sure there will be a "pat my back and I'll pat your back" situation with newspapers.

I think people need to figure out a way to exist in business without Google providing free traffic.

The writing is on the wall.