The Google Knowledge Graph has been launched in May 2012 in order to provide people an easier access to informations about facts, people and things in the SERPs in terms of “entities” and relations to each other and not about keywords in themselves.
Search Engine Journal says that this graph is:
“a technical term used to describe how a set of objects are connected. Google has used a “link graph” to model how pages link to each other, in order to help determine which are popular and relevant for particular searches. Facebook has used a “social graph” to understand how people are connected. “Knowledge Graph” is Google’s term for how it is building relationships between different people, places and things and report facts about these entities.”
Google Knowledge Graph works for notable entity such as famous person, brand or important facts and displays informations to these related contents. But it also linked to both your owned content but also to other websites and even competitors. An e-commerce website should use this feature to optimize its presence on search engines results and control its branded search result.
What does the Google Knowledge Graph look like?
Let’s take the example of Nike:
Almost every result is owned by Nike, the local listing, the corporate sites, the nearest locations, the social profiles. There is only one result which is not owned by Nike, the Yahoo Finance article.
This type of Knowledge Graph is pretty good for a brand since visitors are more likely to click on a result that the brand owns.
How to optimize it?
The Google Knowledge Graph is a combination of schema.org and Google+ Profile. There a few parameters that you can set:
- Your logo: you should decide which logo should be displayed in the Knowledge Graph and where it should lead the visitors. It can for example direct to your Google+ Page. You can have a look at the Google’s official logo guidelines.
- Your contact number: this can be useful for your visitors. Displaying your contact number on the SERPs thanks to the schema.org organization markup will avoid people to search for your number through your website. You can add a range of different number which will have the advantage to increase your panel. Have a look at the official contact guidelines.
- Your social accounts: you can show your social media profiles on the SERPs. From Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Myspace, you can choose 5 of them and add their links. You can set this up through the official profile guidelines.
- Your Google+ recent posts: when integrating your official Google+ account in the Knowledge Graph, your latest posts should be displayed on the SERPs. It is a great way to share with everyone, and not just with the one who are actually using Google+, your latest posts and interests. Actually, people will also be able to follow you directly from the Knowledge Graph.
How to appear in the Knowledge Graph?
There is no exact science on how Google decides whether or not you should appear in its results. In most cases, a brand needs to be a large enough entity for Google. And by large enough, Google refers to how much time the entity is discussed on the web.
Even if there are no specific rules on how this works, some brands have shared tips and common attributes:
- Some entities are not well known by the majority. They are notable companies that operate on stock market or are part of a notable lists for instance. But this is a factor of success that Google takes into account for its Knowledge Graph.
- If your brand appears in Wikipedia it will be a strong signal for Google that your entity is important enough to appear in the Knowledge Graph panel.
- Something simple but if searchers are seeking your brand, it means that your brand arouses interest and that Google might be interested in creating a Knowledge Graph panel.
- An active Google+ account could help to appear in the Knowledge Graph. If Google notices that you are posting regularly and that you own a strong community, you could get your brand regarded as being interesting enough.
- Increase your organic search performance with a powerful content marketing strategy can help boosting your brand awareness and so on your direct traffic and creating a Knowledge Graph panel.
