Google’s Knowledge Graph organizes data about billions of entities, such as people, places, and organizations, to create a map that illustrates how information is related. With it, Google enhances search results using methods such as entity recognition (e.g. entity linking) and the semantic web (web of linked data).
Describe how it works.
Knowledge Graphs are intelligent models that understand the relationships between entities in the real world. Google calls them “things, not strings”. Imagine the Knowledge Graph as Google’s own encyclopedia, which includes entries from Freebase, Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook, and other sources.
Search queries are supplemented and enhanced with this feature. This is a database that gathers millions of data points about keywords that people frequently use, along with their intent as they relate to popular search content.
Knowledge Graphs aren’t generated according to Google’s guidelines, so it can be unclear exactly how they’re generated. Google is more interested in certain areas than others, however. A web page’s number of trustworthy links used to be everything in the past, before Google Hummingbird.
Brand-new blogs are still ranked highly based on link building and link metrics. Since Hummingbird, however, Google’s ability to determine what matters to users has greatly improved. As a result, long-term success comes from sites that deliver a good user experience, are well-structured, and have high-quality content.
Knowledge Graph panels are not automatically displayed when a search for your brand is done because the search engine does not consider the brand to be popular enough to display additional information.
What is the impact of the knowledge graph on SEO?
The Knowledge Graph might seem like such an appealing feature because it makes it easier for users to find information, but it poses a host of problems for SEO.
In the end, Knowledge Graphs can be both friendly and dangerous. You can link to the content you own, as well as external websites, which are sometimes beyond your control.
What are the best ways to optimize a knowledge graph?
In order for your site to appear in rich snippets, your SEO agency can do the following:
Your data needs to be structured
Site data that is structured is organized, like contact details or a recipe. Organizing and displaying information in a creative way is easier when structured and predictable information is available to search engines. It’s best to feed your content into the search engine spiders when you optimize for Google and other search engines. Provide as many search terms as possible on your page so they can easily find them.
Enhance your on-site structure
It is important to note that Knowledge Graph looks at context and intent relative to your site, which means you must optimize your site for both search spiders and human users. It’s important to understand how your audience accesses certain information on your site and what other information they might be seeking related to their search. External links to social media accounts are also important.
Become an authority
If you have authoritative content on your site, Google can treat structured data as factual and incorporate it into its Knowledge Graph, where they can appear prominently across Google properties and in search.
Answering queries is the primary function of a search engine. Knowing a question is different than just generating a list of websites whose content matches a keyword, and Knowledge Graph understands this need. In order for websites to remain relevant and related to Google’s backend search results, it’s imperative that they follow suit.
