Ok I have been trying out the Knowledge Graph and here are some observations.

1. The data appears to be scraped solely from Wikipedia (did Google announce any partnership with Wikipedia that I missed?) with related links taking users to other related searches. That is more searches per search helping in a higher market share?

2. Knowledge Graph seems to appear only when Wikipedia is among the top 3 Organic results. So when I search for "webmasterworld" and there is no Wikipedia result in the top 2-3 results, then no KnowledgeGraph is displayed

3. Unlike what Amit Singhal tells us in his interview on SearchEngineland, the revenue impact does appear to have been taken care of. The KnowledgeGraph seems to appear only on those results where there are very few ads or are keywords that have low performing ads (for example, "Paris" shows up the graph whereas "Visit Paris" does not. Earlier "Paris" too had ads but I presume they were low performing since most of the searches could have been academic). Adwords marketers can expect a higher ROI due to this.

4. Google ensures ads are on the top fold even in cases KnowledgeGraph gets shown. A search for "Niagara falls" shows up a collapsible KG with ads below it. Layman users might fall for this and think the ads are part of Google's information kit. Adwords marketers can see a higher CTR with this.

[edited by: anand84 at 5:03 am (utc) on May 18, 2012]

What does "knowledge graph" have to do with "social graph"? I don't see any connection at all.

Knowledge Graph is very closely tied to Google's original Mission Statement = "to organize the worlds information" and in the purest way, as I see it.

Actually, when you get to have a closer look at Wikipedia, how it works and the mentality of some of the editors, you'll start relying on your own search results. There are some bitter and twisted souls contributing their bias to what is supposed be a dictionary free of self opinion.

Some questions that many are asking themselves:

• How did Google gather this knowledge info? Did they use their search engine to scrap content or did they hire researches?
  
• How did we, as webmaster, contribute to the "Knowledge Graph"? Did they rely on (some) of the content located in our websites?
  
• Have we donated our best content & valuable information to Google? I bet we already did without asking our permission.
  
• Is this announcement tries to tell us that this is the best way to shrink our small web businesses. I bet it is .. for the long run.

Correct me if I am wrong.

I remember reading a book (sci-fi) about something like the Knowledge Graph - to kill this beast you have to feed it misinformation rendering it useless.

@tedster

What does "knowledge graph" have to do with "social graph"? I don't see any connection at all.

An as yet unknown decline in the Google share price as the market becomes temporarily infatuated with the Facebook launch. In PR (Press Release) terms, the Knowledge Graph "story" (actually it is very much the same press release with a top and tail from "technology" journalists the world over) is being promoted because it maintains some of the focus on Google even though the lead tech/business story for most media organisations at the moment is the Facebook flotation and valuation.

Knowledge Graph is very closely tied to Google's original Mission Statement = "to organize the worlds information" and in the purest way, as I see it.

A lawyer once told me that I was a too cynical to be a lawyer. I took that as a great compliment. :) With large organisations such as Google, there is almost always an ulterior motive and the rise and flotation of Facebook is certainly encouragement for Google to do something "spectacular" to attract attention away from it.

Regards...jmcc

Q/
It will come as a relief when we can finally block all access to G because of their constant abuse. That point is not far away.
/Q

Q/
Just ask the book publishers how that works... When enough people block Googlebot to the point it starts effecting their depth of knowledge on the web, they will simply ignore the directive.
/Q

Oh we won't rely on a robots block, we already block much of their scraping bots by UA, and when The Day dawns we will block on CIDR.

I imagine all the quality websites will take such action soon too.

To me, Google is acknowledging that competitors like Wolfram Alpha do some things much better than Google, and are reacting accordingly.

For informational questions of the type Google is looking to answer, I don't have a problem with it at all. I see it as Google's job to provide answers to such questions, and it is the ideal conduit since it has already collected and collated many sources of such information.

I also don't see it as a threat as it stands at the moment. A threat to Wikipedia perhaps, and fact-based informational sites - but those sites are merely collecting information anyway and have always been at threat from anyone else who chooses to collect and display the same factual information.

I'm well aware that the danger is that the presentation of facts becomes opinion, and so-called original research, but that's not what I see happening currently.

What does "knowledge graph" have to do with "social graph"?
-tedster

...the word "graph" and the concept of marking up information. It was Google's way of implying, "Hey, you better markup your data in a way we like.", with an implication that it is a competing form of markup to the FB's "Social Graph".

...the Knowledge Graph "story" ......... is being promoted because it maintains some of the focus on Google...
-jmccormac

Exactly. This "story" is months old -- why it's being pushed out this week is obvious.

londrum wrote:
eg. if your site contains a biography of Matt Groening (to use the example from Google's blog) you'd want to prevent google from including the information on the first page of the SERPs.

I honestly don't believe it's Google's intent to publish his entire biography, from any site, on the first page of their results. Do you?

It's the simple, at-a-glance stuff, like the names of his family, birth date, etc. that could reasonably be provided up front. And who really "owns" that information, anyway? Whose right is it to profit (monetarily or otherwise) from that information?

lexipixel wrote:
This "story" is months old [...]

"We're working on this thing" and "we've officially introduced that thing we told you we were working on" aren't quite the same story. The repetition of the description is necessary for those who are more interested in what is new than what will be new.

No one describes an upcoming product in pre-release and then fails to describe it in the official release announcement.

-- Off-topic. Apologies... --

incrediBILL wrote:
@rlange I agree they edit it for entertainment purposes, but you obviously don't talk to enough average people about what you and I would consider general knowledge.

Well, I spend a decent amount of my spare time in a forum dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories (if anyone needed an explanation for my distaste of paranoia and conspiracy theories). Every time I think I've read the dumbest thing possible, somebody lowers the bar even more.

However, those people are a "special" breed. I would say the average person isn't necessarily stupid; they're just not interested in knowing or remembering certain things beyond what is necessary for them to live their lives or satisfy their personal curiosities.

--
Ryan

@anand84 why did you edit your post comparing the social graph to the knowledge graph? Some challenged it, but others explained the connections you could not explain yourself. It's good for debate and the PR explanation seems valid, although the knowledge graph is something that has been planned by Google since 2009.

@Zivush your questions have been answered several times already in this thread.

How did Google gather this knowledge info?

Using bots that read semantic markup.

How did we, as webmaster, contribute to the "Knowledge Graph"?

You only contribute to the knowledge graph if you want to by enabling semantic mark up on your Web site.

Have we donated our best content & valuable information to Google?

Read answer above.

Is this announcement tries to tell us that this is the best way to shrink our small web businesses.

You can do with your small Web business whatever you want with it. Business is about competition, adaptation and fulfilling your clients' needs. Nothing of that changes with the knowledge graph.

@Andy Langton Wikipedia which is quite progressive about such things has probably enabled semantic metadata on its site, making it a prime source for Google to find information that can turned into knowledge. If there was another huge site with Web 3.0 mark up enabled, I'm sure Google would get their information from them too. Hence, I don't feel bad for Wiki at all. They enabled the graph understanding fully what the consequences were.

@indyank

Anything that suits your convenience, isn't it?

Not sure if you were "accusing" me of working for Google. Don't work for them "yet." I'm just a believer in semantic Web and Web 3.0 whether it's Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft or Twitter that pushes it. Semantic Web was not invented by Google or Wolfram Alpha. It was planned as the next logical step of the Web before Larry and Sergey started their PhD work on Google. Google is the one large Web enterprise that is pushing this thing the right way, although they could have provided better communications to calm the fears of webmasters as evidenced here.

That some webmasters today act as if Google was stealing from them and is breaking some kind of social contract with them is the wrong interpretation. They grew comfortable in the last 10-15 years Web publishing model and now that the next step of Web development planned almost 20 years ago is taking form and is been pushed by Google, they act as if they were deceived.

They react exactly like the old dinosaurs they are used to making fun of in the media industries that just don't "get it." They are talking of erecting walls and blocking bots and such, while ignoring the premise on which semantic Web is built on. It's a buy in. You don't enable Web 3.0 on your property, you won't contribute to it.

That a competitor may decide to enable it on his property and possibly include similar information you both share is no more different than the Wikipedia editors using DMoz to find all the sources of information one one topic and then creating a wiki based on their contents. You can't stop them. If you want to have full proof contents that no one else can ever copy, don't put it on the Web and keep the information to yourself because there are no full proof way to keep information locked in once it's circulated, even off line. I'm not advocating piracy of contents at all. God knows how much stuff people have stolen from my sites that was clearly copyrighted and definitely unique intel. I still believe in the Web and I definitely believe in Web 3.0

@Harry I think you mistook Tedster's post for mine. I had edited my post to correct some typos and elaborate on point 1.

Knowledge graph, eh. Am I being too cynical if the word 'gimmick' springs to my mind?

Has anyone actually seen this in action yet?

It's the simple, at-a-glance stuff, like the names of his family, birth date, etc. that could reasonably be provided up front. And who really "owns" that information, anyway? Whose right is it to profit (monetarily or otherwise) from that information?

Ok, here is an example. My friends answer these questions in an exam. I go to the examination hall, scan these answer sheets and present them as my set of answers. Will it be acceptable to the examiners in real life? Google wants webmasters to promote businesses online like they do in the offline world. That is they want them to spend a lot of money on promotion/marketing. But when it comes to these kind of stuff, people conveniently argue it as the nature of web.

Not sure if you were "accusing" me of working for Google. Don't work for them "yet." I'm just a believer in semantic Web and Web 3.0 whether it's Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft or Twitter that pushes it. Semantic Web was not invented by Google or Wolfram Alpha. It was planned as the next logical step of the Web before Larry and Sergey started their PhD work on Google. Google is the one large Web enterprise that is pushing this thing the right way, although they could have provided better communications to calm the fears of webmasters as evidenced here.

That some webmasters today act as if Google was stealing from them and is breaking some kind of social contract with them is the wrong interpretation. They grew comfortable in the last 10-15 years Web publishing model and now that the next step of Web development planned almost 20 years ago is taking form and is been pushed by Google, they act as if they were deceived.

In my "You", I meant Google. I am sorry for that confusion.

What you are talking about as evolution of web planned in those early days were done without any thought on who would commercially benefit by doing so. Internet is now a huge commercial marketplace. Google being a big and a monopolistic search engine is jumping into it to slice and dice the web and presenting them as their own answers. There are several websites which spend a lot of time and money to research, compile and present these information to users. To compensate themselves, they monetize their effort with ads. Google decides they will now have panda to deal with those sites that provide brief answers. They then build the KG by making users provide information in the form they want and go on to present them to users as their answers.

They then go on to introduce penguin to ensure that a new site cannot gain visibility on a search engine without promotion by ads and other marketing efforts.

Monopoly is a huge threat. If microsoft was considered monopolistic in those early days, Google is an even bigger threat to web and search neutrality.

It's going to be interesting to see what this does to Wikipedia's traffic ... A lot of simple questions will be answered with no need to visit the site any more.

Total motivation killer for anyone trying to provide large information repositories.

I will confess that this evening is my first experience seeing this. I was searching a rock band and there it was.

I'm not sure the point of this thread other than a discussion?

I can only share that for me, I've had a somewhat gut/emotional reaction to it. I will have to scratch my head a bit and decide for myself how this relates to how I do things regarding websites, writing or anything relating to adding content onto the web.

I will definitely remember this experience. One thing to talk about it. It's another to see it in play. Like I said I'm having a reaction to this. Not sure if anyone else can relate or not to that gut feeling.

to kill this beast you have to feed it misinformation rendering it useless.

THE ABOVE is the real key. Take this action and it will invalidate evrything Rich Snippets is about.

You still get the nice pic and stars in the SERPS but without feeding everything to the data harvester.

YOU are in control over what you tag with Rich Snippets, use your control wisely and make a fool of whoever is harvesting YOUR data.

Thus far , methinks Wikipedia has been allowed to be, un molested, because its 'Supposedly a non profit'

However, it will be interesting to see if attitudes to wiki change if the use of info collated in wiki can be shown to be earning a profit for a profit making company, in a way thats,

incremental to that company

and decremental to those who have reason to believe that their original material may have been ,,,, appropriated/integrated into Wiki


historically, this thread would not massively interest me, however as i am looking at getting into the editorial content arena, it behoves me to pay attention

However, it will be interesting to see if attitudes to wiki change if the use of info collated in wiki can be shown to be earning a profit for a profit making company

That's not something new. Wikipedia is under GNU free documentation license which means I can make money from their content as long as I provide the attribution. Answers.com has been using Wikipedia content to profit for quite a while.

I just have to say: Google did steal Yelp's content for Google Places, as Yelp testified in the Congressional hearing last year. So I do understand the concerns people have raised about what Google might do with our content. Not so much based on anything to do with the KG, but just on Google's demonstration of its corporate ethics so far. For more on Yelp... [socialtimes.com ]

That said, however, I agree with Andy Langton. My business model is providing information and opinions. I am always vulnerable to someone who can provide similar information or opinion that readers prefer for whatever reason. Google got into the affiliate game a while ago; now they may be getting into the content game. We're not going to beat them at either. Then again, I provide different types of content from Wikipedia, so they're not really my competitor, so I really don't see KG affecting me either way.

But for those of you who do compete with Wikipedia? The least savvy searchers I know have strong opinions about Wikipedia - they either Google to get to Wikipedia results, or they roll their eyes and ignore Wikipedia results completely and scroll down to see what else Google's got. The people who Googled to get to Wikipedia were probably never going to your site, anyway, since Wiki's been at the top for years.

But the un-savvy who ignored Wikipedia may be further turned off to Google. They already think Google and Wikipedia have some partnership going, and this will "prove" it in their minds. They may start ignoring the whole first fold, or they may even seek another search engine.

I think the end results of this will be 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. But I do think almost any noticeable change Google makes will turn some people off, and we'll have a chance to connect with those people somewhere else.

That's not something new. Wikipedia is under GNU free documentation license which means I can make money from their content as long as I provide the attribution. Answers.com has been using Wikipedia content to profit for quite a while.

Wiki based answers is not the same as Corporate use of wikipedia content

indyank wrote:
Ok, here is an example. My friends answer these questions in an exam. I go to the examination hall, scan these answer sheets and present them as my set of answers. Will it be acceptable to the examiners in real life?

Who do the examiners represent here; Google search users? If so, the example is entirely without relevance. The examiners in your hypothetical are grading your knowledge of a subject; they're not asking you to find information for them.

Even then, the examiners rarely ask where you found the information to answer the question.

rango wrote:
Total motivation killer for anyone trying to provide large information repositories.

They'll just have to go above and beyond simple regurgitation of information, then. Information repositories were always under threat of someone making that information easier and more pleasant to access. Just ask Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, etc...

--
Ryan

I went into a magazine shop here in the UK the other day, and it was full of magazines, and i was reminded that producers of content that costs real money (not $5/$15 per article) either have their content entirely off line, or behind paywalls that they improve constantly

To me, the economics of free content is debatable at best, it only works for those who do their research via the web, by use of scanners,,

Who do the examiners represent here; Google search users? If so, the example is entirely without relevance. The examiners in your hypothetical are grading your knowledge of a subject; they're not asking you to find information for them.

Even then, the examiners rarely ask where you found the information to answer the question.

I am not making a literal comparison with Google search. I don't mean examiners as users. You can neither scan others answers and present them as your own answer book for an examination (in any part of the world) nor you can xerox a book (including those that contain facts) and sell it.

Google never wants others to do anything automated but everything it does is fully automated. However, there should be a limit on the extent they can automate.

There should be a law, if there isn't one already, that a search engine is only entitled to rank pages based on relevance, quality etc. and not to extract, process and present information to their users in any way they want.A search engine is meant to be a search engine and integrating their own products/modules like the knowledge graph, google places, shopping, videos, maps, etc. to the search engine is definitely against the principles of search neutrality. Keep those products separate and do any innovation you want within the limitations of laws and acceptable practices.

ps: Microsoft wasn't allowed to bundles their browser with their OS and why should Google be allowed to bundle so many other products/modules with their search engine? Neither of these companies should be allowed to be a monopoly and carry on anti competitive practices.

The European Commission seem inclined to agree
[bbc.com ]

The manner in which Google displays "its own vertical search services differently" from other, competing products.

That is the biggest threat and is definitely anti-competitive. It is not about displaying their vertical search services differently but also displaying others content differently, in a way that competes with competing sites/products. EC seem to have missed that and should include it as well.

For example, the way they display wikipedia content (or content of other sites, if any) differently as knowledge graph or anything else is also anti-competitive and not neutral.

Yes, they might argue that it curbs innovation but innovation shouldn't be at the cost of destroying competition on an interface that has to be neutral. This is more so because you don't own any content of your own but crawl,rank and display others content. They can have their innovation on their own product interfaces (where they own everything including content) and not within SERPS (Search interface). Off-course, you should have permission from the site owners whose information you extract and display in such vertical searches/products. Wikipedia might agree but not everyone else, knowing what you can do to them as you become monopolistic.