so google is telling us if you search for Taj Mahal it will know if you were looking for the local restaurant or the place in India. isn't that a huge step forward in google search results?

I don't think this is really anything new. Google has, for the past several years, tried to incorporate useful information above search results and I find their math-related answers pretty useful. Math is one thing (a constant), but information about something which normally includes history and debated 'facts' is another.

I feel that this is just a moment when Google publicly declares that they are 'scraping' the web. Their algorithms have gone haywire in the past couple of years, and if these so-called geniuses at the 'Plex really think they can tell a fact from a lie, then I have my reservations; on that note, Wikipedia is completely trusted by the Google algorithm despite its own inherit distrust: I've read more half-truths, lies, propaganda, point-of-view and disinformation on Wikipedia than I can count.

>> I don't think Google has officially declared war on the webmasters that made them great

I don't think this is true. Picture a board meeting where the BOD is trying to decide how to make more money. One guy comes up with the great idea to replace their revenue share with webmasters (those running AdSense or competition) by duplicating the services and information which they provide. Now, instead of having to share the majority of ad revenue with the publisher of the information, they can have a bot scrape it and regurgitate it with Google now pocketing the cash and removing the chance of a repeat visitor to the site(s) they 'stole' the content from.

^^ Completely plausible; Google *is* a publicly-traded company.

>> isn't that a huge step forward in google search results?

Ha ha, very funny. Google doesn't know its head from its toes at this point.

>>Ha ha, very funny. Google doesn't know its head from its toes at this point.

I don't think so.

I suppose this could also reduce low quality traffic to sites as people have gotten the quick answer. Those that do follow the SERPS may bounce less, stay longer, view more pages, and click more ads.

No need to leave Google and they are attempting to provide the answers on their pages if they can. It all makes sense really.

It makes sense from a Google point of view, nobody is saying otherwise, but from a webmaster point of view the value of Google is diminished and so it makes sense to begin plans to adjust accordingly before this self proclaimed "baby step" towards their goal(which is now much clearer) matures further.

One opportunity is to provide and support alternatives to Google products, the competition must be both ways to remain balanced. I already miss how things were just two years ago, I was 100% pro-Google but I just don't like where they've gone with this (as a webmaster). Today I'm actually feeling badly for Wikipedia because, yet again, Google is making inroads to become more like them. They want to be Facebook, Wikipedia and search all in one but we already have those, ya know?

Wikipedia stole from webmasters too. In fact, Wiki has scrapped more from my sites than anyone else, in the name of their free encyclopedia. I'm not shedding a single tear fro Wiki today.

I'm actually excited about the knowledge graph. Depending on what kind of site you have, it may or may not hurt your business.

Google did not invent the knowledge graph. The knowledge graph has been proposed since the 1990s by the Web's founders and is better known as the semantic Web or Web 3.0. Google, here is just following a logical course that was proposed by many bright minds over a decade ago.

Here is some clarification on the no scrape issue. Google cannot automatically scrape your contents unless you enable semantics on your site. It can figure out a few things here and there, but unless you provide the structure for your stuff to be scrapped, Google will not attempt to take from you. Having said that, there will be enough of your competitors enabling the semantic Web on their sites to allow Google to semanticize from them instead of you.

I'm not saying that there's a value proposition to be a semantics that has yet to be proven. But Google will get its information from somewhere and it needs to be in the right format for its robots to understand. That's what the semantic Web is all about. Allowing the bots to understand the data they are swallowing.

This is something to follow and observe with an open mind, and not jump to conclusions. Maybe Google is better at serving information to my users than me for some types of knowledge. It is wrong to accept that?

I could be wrong, but I think users are a lot higher on Google's radar than webmasters are. Anytime they have to decide whether something is better for users or better for webmasters - the users are gonna win every time.

(Similar to how advertisers will always outrank publishers in the priority scale for AdSense/AdWords)

It is what it is.

I think users are a lot higher on Google's radar than webmasters are

Agreed netmeg :)..but

Profits are a lot higher than users on Google's radar..

Which is how it should be..( I think that they even have a legal obligation to consider the making of profits for their shareholders to be primordial under USA law ) since their IPO..

But I have no intention of allowing them to make their profits by scraping any of my content ( all of which is not sourced / scraped from elsewhere, and is 100% original self produced ) in order for them to "double dip" in generating secondary serps with ads.. ..a short snippet" ( one or two lines ) in their serps ( their serps are made up entirely of "snippets", images etc in a "mash up" of all webmaster's sites ) in return for some search traffic..from their primary search results pages..has been ( until now ) the symbiotic relationship between Google and webmasters..

Using what they index of our sites to produce a set of "secondary" serps which will keep users on their properties( made from our work "mashed up" ) changes that relationship..

They are not my primary source of traffic ( I anticipated their rapaciousness a long time ago and took action to mitigate it and it's effects )..if they change the relationship in ways that I see ( I will be watching this very closely as they "roll it out" ) as detrimental they will be banned from those sites which they abuse..

I have banned Google from my images on all my sites for years, and also forbidden their caching of any pages..it has never harmed my serps position or Google generated traffic..

tedster..I say this with immense respect, because over the years I have come to realise how much you wish "to see the other side" ..to be "even handed"..and not to see only the negative impacts possible..

But being scraped has never brought long term benefits to any webmaster..being scraped by Google is no different..the scraper takes your content and uses it as their own ( and invariably places ads around it ..usually adsense ) and you do not get the traffic from it ..thus you have net loss of your time and energy spent in making the content when placed against the rewards which did not come..

ehow is a perfect example of the above..

Google scraping you will be no different from ehow ( except possibly Google will not "no follow" you :)..but as the "user" will have already had the info / data/image etc ( scraped from you ) that they sought within Google's secondary serps ( knowledge graph" ) ..or clicked upon an ad..you will not get the visitor..

This is an extension of the commercial philosophy behind "preview"..on steroids..

I say this as someone who is on the whole pro wikipedia ( my "stuff" has been used by them , and I have donated ) a non profit repository for knowledge and information ( even if it may frequently be inaccurate due to "edits" etc or "internal politics" inside wikipedia ) is something I am in favour of..so I do not begrudge them what they find of mine, ( they at least take the trouble to rewrite it , and occasionally link back to me :)..scraped verbatim ( or mashed up or spun ) by Google or anyone else to serve as decoration to put ads around..NO!

There comes a time when the "smart webmaster"..slams the door on the scrapers, whoever they are ( to do otherwise is to give in to the bully )..says "enough" ..and makes the act of scraping, something that will come back to hurt the scraper..

My country's judges, laws, and legislators are not as acquiescent to Google as many others are..

edited for speeelling..

[edited by: Leosghost at 12:23 am (utc) on May 17, 2012]

scraped verbatim ( or mashed up or spun ) by Google or anyone else to serve as decoration to put ads around..NO!

This is the problem they will have, we have already seen the rows over scrapping reviews. They are in danger of annoying quite a few corporates who won't just sit back.

If all the info is on one screen, and all the info is scrapped the number of legal actions would increase - which as a public company is normally bad news, and then the shutters will go up ( googlebot noindex ) and Goggle will suffer .. and Bing will rise ( hopefully ).

I maybe overplaying it a bit ...

"One guy comes up with the great idea to replace their revenue share with webmasters (those running AdSense or competition) by duplicating the services and information which they provide. Now, instead of having to share the majority of ad revenue with the publisher of the information, they can have a bot scrape it and regurgitate it with Google now pocketing the cash and removing the chance of a repeat visitor to the site(s) they 'stole' the content from. "

Yes, but this is what they did to Yelp years ago, and that was kind of my point. I was saying it's not a declaration of war because it's actually a continuation of the way Google's been treating webmasters for years - as competitors who have a piece of the web that Google wants for itself. This is nothing new. This is why I cannot get over people still thinking of Google as owing webmasters traffic rather than doing everything the national governments will allow to steal that traffic from them. As Leosghost said, Google is practically mandated by US law and the realities of the marketplace to do just that. And in their place, we would be pressured to do the same to them.

The web is the only place in the universe where people think it's a valid business model to figure, "I shall rely upon my biggest competitor to recommend me."

Google said it could actually drive more traffic to Wikipedia, which will be prominently linked to in the summary boxes. A Wikipedia spokesman said Google is using Wikipedia information in an appropriate way.

[guardian.co.uk ]

Wish Google communicated better. Everything they do, even if it's for the better good of users and to improve the Web turns against them. I'm not a Google cheerleader. You guys can check my various posts over the years to verify that, but Google is not doing something bad here.

There's already misinformation going around. Unless you specifically add semantic Web tags to your mark ups, Google will not take your contents automatically from your Web site. That's why they've been pushing Web semantic tags since 2009. If you don't want Google's bots to understand that your article about the Eiffel Tower is about the background info on the tower, Google will not scrap your stuff.

You need to buy in for your stuff to be aggregated.

Don't use Web semantics on your site, and Google will likely skip it and get the information it seeks elsewhere.

Had Google communicated that clearly we wouldn't have this thread going sideways already with people accusing Google of the worse offenses.

Semantic Web is good. It's good for users. Google did not think up this on its own. The Web's founders and pioneers always meant for the Web to be semantic. Before Google existed, this was discussed and planned by lots of smart well-meaning people.

Google, because of its size is the one company pushing Web 3.0. This is something if Yahoo had been smart, they could have nailed on their own and found a niche for themselves. People, please don't fight against progress. Semantic Web is good for all.

Guys remember, information wants to be free. Don't start acting like the publishing / music / film industries.

likely

is the important bit..because it is not certain at all that they will not use any and all data that they index..

And if Google was so keen on letting information "be free"..they'd be OK with scraping their results..which they do not allow..

What Google got wrong ( PR snow jobs in the Grauniad to tame journos not withstanding ) was thinking that everyone whose content that they would use, would sit still for this..

We don't need Google to point the way to wikipedia ( with ads around the arrows ) they are not doing the world a favour by cynically monetising indirectly, for their own gain, what is a non profit non ad driven wiki..They may as well just frame it and put ads around it ..but they wouldn't dare..

If Google scraped everything I made, so that no one would ever need to come to my sites via them, who would pay my bills, ( hosting etc ) or at least the parts thereof, generated by their scraping..

Me ..but I'd have to work twice as hard..or block or inhibit them still more..as I do already with my images and no cache ..

Google began by being symbiotic..they are rapidly becoming purely parasitic..

this was discussed and planned by lots of smart well-meaning people

Which does not make them correct in their assumptions..a great many incredibly stupid and dangerous destructive things have been done by "smart well meaning people" throughout history..

I will decide what is best for me , not Google whose motive is profit , not the altruism that they would have you believe drives them, in order to sweeten the pill..and most certainly, I will decide, and not Google, if I will allow my work to be used for free, or paid for, and in what circumstances, and by whom..

[edited by: Leosghost at 1:57 am (utc) on May 17, 2012]

Information wants to be free

In the mid 1980s, technologist Stewart Brand observed "Information wants to be free"... Brand was the Founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and his full quote is:

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

[urgentspeed.com...]

It's these TWO faces of information that are now in conflict - and somewhere in there is where I feel that our opportunity lies.

@Leosghost, your observations are well stated - however, I feel they are a bit too simplistic and do not capture the full paradox of the situation. Instead, they use an old one-sided model that leads only to confrontation. Understandable? Yes - but it's ultimately less than fully adaptive.

A better model of the moment must come from game theory - specifically a competitive-cooperative game or ecology.

If they attempt to steal the bread from my mouth or from the mouths of my family ..or my means to earn that bread..take what is mine, made by my effort and use it as if it were theirs, without my accord , and without recompense, then I will not "adapt"..

I will slam the door in their face, and if they attempt to enter, will fight them..

There is no "paradox" here tedster ..there is only a rapacious corp trying to take the fruits of the work of others and use it for profit, as if it were theirs..like any other scraper..

Ecology..to use a simili from ecology / biology ..one removes a parasite in order to have healthy organism..
a parasite left in place with access to the host will eventually kill it ..

They were symbiotic..they are now morphing into something closer to a parasite..

Belief in the beneficial aspects of the freedom of information, is why I support wikipedia,( with all it's faults ) and don't mind when occasionally they re-use / rehash my work ..it is a modern library of Alexandria ..a repository of what is known or what is thought..


Scraping for profit by Google takes the "free" out of "freedom" of information..and leaves only the "dom", as in "domination"..

Google's Amit Singhal Introduces Knowledge Graph

Again?

Much of this was discussed here at WebmasterWorld back in February:

[webmasterworld.com...]

...and rehashed here and in other media in March:

[webmasterworld.com...]

...as I posted in the February thread, Google didn't invent or innovate "Knowledge Graph [Theory]", it dates back the 1980's. And Google just wants a buzzword term to compete with Facebook's "Social Graph"... and it's also not new because [DuckDuckGo.com...] was doing it before Google.

Unless you are 800lb gorilla on the web, plan on giving up more of your bananas to those who are -- or paying them to let you swing from the same vines.

This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.

The problem is that most of the people are as dumb as a stump so if Google relies on their collective intelligence we're all doomed to suffer mountains of misinformation.

Just watch the Tonight shows recurring "Jay Walking" skit and you'll see what I mean.

As an aid to this discussion, and the implications of some of the points raised, I'd recommend reading Justice Brandeis [en.wikiquote.org...]

It is what it is.

Yes, I agree, Google is deciding to be a company without editors that displays content instead of sending visitors to it. I wish them well with that, they'll need it.

They've been heading in this direction a long, long time.

"The next generation of search" does make it sound exciting though, very well presented.

Maybe this future will evolve into a differentiation between knowledge engines and search engines.

Google seems to sail a very close line of giving me what they think I want, and telling me what I think I want.

The door keeps opening wider for competition to Google, since they are becoming their own content display site. It's like they are a turning into a version of Yahoo without the expense of creating the content that they had.

This has been in the works for sometime now and I expect the so called knowledge graph to be from wikipedia most of the times. It is about places, people, buildings etc. and these are the kind of stuff that Google had already pushed wikipedia to No.1. Add to that list, dictionary meanings for any English word. This might expand to other global languages as well.

So, What the great Amit singhal proudly presents to you is wikipedia under the brand name of Google.

They are natural partners. Wikipedia doesn't show ads and Google does. That makes a great partnership and the wikipedia top brass will be happy with any Google sponsorship.

ps: I sympathise with those wikipedia authors who make selfless voluntary contributions,

Ok so now that the right side of the real estate is being taken up by Google for showcasing its "knowledge", I presume the only place where they make money is by compensating it with more ads on the top of the Organic results; which makes me question where the organic links that are supposed to be shown on Google are going to be.

Google has flouted its own guidelines here -

Duplicate content? check
Ads on the top fold? Check

Google Knowledge Graph = Yahoo 1990s Portal 2.0

Regards...jmcc

I like the way they talk about 'collecting' data in their video.

I wonder, will it now be called 'collecting' if I do the same by taking information from other sites and putting ads around it? I thought it was called something else...

I wonder, will it now be called 'collecting' if I do the same by taking information from other sites and putting ads around it? I thought it was called something else...

Just curious if Google can be DMCA'd into stopping their web scraping strategy.

US needs a new president for controlling this greedy monster.

Honestly, it is downright evil to scrape others hard worked content and provide them as answers to their users. It should be made mandatory for all search engines to respect meta description tag and show that alone to their users.They should be stopped from arm twisting site owners into providing them the information they want in the name of rich snippets and so on.

When google becomes the police to penalize sites scraping content as spam, who will police them? It can only be a new president.

Well nice move by Google, Looks good to me.

Since Google never "forgets" anything, misinformation will accumulate quicker than truth.

Indeed, mis-information will become truth, "because Google says so".