{"id":15324,"date":"2013-07-22T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=15324"},"modified":"2013-07-22T16:59:37","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T20:59:37","slug":"10-reasons-that-the-google-knowledge-graph-sucks-more-than-the-local-graph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/22\/10-reasons-that-the-google-knowledge-graph-sucks-more-than-the-local-graph\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Reasons that the Google Knowledge Graph Sucks More than the Local Graph"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>The Knowledge Panel sucks much more than Google Local these days. Its like<\/a> “D\u00e9j\u00e0 vue all over again” (for those Googlers and other readers too young to know the reference go here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

With the Knowledge Graph, like local, Google is attempting to reflect real information about the real world in their search results and, like in local, the disconnect between the real world and Google’s understanding of it can lead to erroneous results and bad outcomes.<\/p>\n

Here is how Google described<\/a> the Knowledge Graph upon its release in May of last year:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just a catalog of objects; it also models all these inter-relationships. It\u2019s the intelligence\u00a0between<\/i>\u00a0these different entities that\u2019s the key.<\/p>\n

The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about\u2014landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more\u2014and instantly get information that\u2019s relevant to your query<\/p>\n

Knowledge results seem to suffer from many of the same fates as local listings such as merging and duplicates. And like Local in the days of old, there are very limited support mechanisms, no support team and no dedicated UI to feed trusted info.\u00a0I suppose if the Grand Canyon has a wrong fact no one is likely to be hugely impacted but a certain percentage of Knowledge Graph entities are also real world businesses and brands and misinformation can be costly \u00a0for them.<\/p>\n

Typically the Knowledge Graph Panels seem to have different content <\/a>than a local listing and it is more based on the structured data of Freebase, Wikipedia entries, the CIA Factbook and other sources that are NOT clearly identified.\u00a0However if an entity already has a local listing then the Knowledge Graph Panel will draw some information (address, phone, reviews) from the\u00a0canonical local data as well. It is at this intersection of landmarks and local where the impact of mistakes are obvious and the lack of full fledged support options become problematic for a business. And it is at this intersection of a business as cultural icon and local where the search volume is very high and the implications of even a few errors can impact a huge number of searchers and have a significant economic effect on the business.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>The process for repair of a Knowledge Graph panel is simple enough. Perhaps too simple so as to be not very obvious. One only has to click on the small, grey “Feedback\/More Info” link at the bottom of the panel to report bad information. The panel then offers the opportunity to flag any field of information as wrong.<\/p>\n

Why is this problematic?<\/p>\n