The morning of July 19th there was a major Google update, and no one is talking about it. Put simply: We missed it, because we just weren't looking for it. Overnight, the number of queries we track in the MozCast 10K beta system that show some kind of Knowledge Graph jumped from 17.8% to 26.7%, an increase of over 50%. This was not a test or a one-day fluke — here's a graph for all of July 2013 (as of August 20th, the number has remained stable near 27%):
So, let's get to the meat of it — who were the big overnight winners? What did those "new" Knowledge Graph boxes look like, and were there any clear patterns?
The overnight winners
There were 908 queries that picked up Knowledge Graph (KG) entries on July 19th in our data, so the full list is a bit much for a blog post, but let's look at 20 high-volume queries (this data was actually pulled on August 16th, since some queries had lost KG boxes in the interim):
- garmin
- primark
- avianca
- ancestry
- suntrust
- toms
- royal caribbean
- cheap tickets
- oakley
- forex
- tractor supply
- discount tire
- ulta
- casio
- nectar
- famous footwear
- new balance
- david's bridal
- gander mountain
- philippine airlines
At a glance, 16 of these seem to be known brands (I think we can count "ancestry" and "cheap tickets" as brand queries in 2013), with "forex", "tractor supply", "discount tire", and "nectar" not having obvious brand associations. We'll come back to "forex" (I discovered something interesting there), but Google is treating both "tractor supply" and "discount tire" as brand queries. The Knowledge Graph for "tractor supply" shows:
A search for "discount tire" shows a smaller, expanding KG entry, below ads and a map (for my search, at least):
The one clear outlier in this group was the search for "nectar", which pulled up two KG-style entries (we classify them pretty loosely, to throw a wide net): (1) an answer-box style entry (but in the right-hand column), and (2) a disambiguation box:
Across the entire data set, "brand" queries seemed to fare well in this Knowledge Graph gold rush, although there were exceptions. Let's look at an interesting case — the search for "forex".
The Forex oddity
"Forex" is a highly competitive search term, and pretty notorious for being spammed. When I went to check the query, I wasn't seeing a Knowledge Graph entry, so I took a look at the history since mid-July. The #1 position has bounced back and forth between Wikipedia and Forex.com. Across 32 days of data (since July 19th), Wikipedia has ranked #1 (in our data set) 10 of those days. Every day Wikipedia has ranked #1, the SERP has shown a Knowledge Graph entry:
On the 22 days where Forex.com ranked #1 (and Wikipedia ranked #2), a Knowledge Graph entry only appeared three times (13.6%). As you can see, the KG entry is informational, suggesting that Google is interpreting the query as an information-seeking search. While this is highly speculative, it's possible that the informational interpretation that drives this KG entry is also pushing Wikipedia into the #1 spot. When, for whatever reason, Google interprets the query more loosely or as a navigational query, then Forex.com ranks #1 and the KG entry often disappears. Again, this is just speculation, but it does demonstrate that — like rankings — KG entries are being interpreted and displayed in real-time and can fluctuate from search to search.
The Wikipedia connection
You can see even from these few examples that many of the new results are using data from Wikipedia. When Google launched Knowledge Graph in May of 2012, they stated that "Google's Knowledge Graph isn't just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook." Of course, this implies that Freebase, Wikipedia, and the CIA Factbook are sources, and observations of KG data seem to support this.
What's interesting about the new Knowledge Graph entries coming from Wikipedia is that they suggest that the data itself isn't new. It's unlikely that Wikipedia entries/data exploded overnight, so that leaves us with two theories: (1) Google imported more existing Wikipedia data, or (2) Google chose to let more queries display a Knowledge Graph entry and lowered some kind of algorithmic threshold. As large as Wikipedia is, it's unlikely that storage capacity is a major issue for Google, so I think that (2) is the more likely explanation — Google has simply loosened the restrictions on which queries can trigger the Knowledge Graph.
The entity connection
So, what's tipping these new Knowledge Graph entries? I try to avoid the word "brand" when talking about the algorithm, because it carries a lot of bias and we all seem to mean something a little different. I do think, however, that there is an entity connection that certainly looks brand-like. Here's another odd query that gained a KG entry on July 19th — "chicken recipes":
For most of us, I think Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken is a bit of stretch for "chicken recipes", which is clearly an informational query. Even Google organic results clearly recognize the intent, with actual recipes for chicken dishes taking up the entire top 10.
Here's another odd query that generated a suggestion for an entity — "army games":
What's funny is that Google doesn't display a "Showing results for…" spelling correction or seem to think that I actually meant "armor" when I typed "army". They've just chosen to give a fairly unrelated entity a bit of extra credit. All of the top 10 rankings are based on "army" and there is no mention of Armor Games outside of the KG entry.
The entity/brand connection is a nice theory, but then we have a query like "vegetarian recipes", which also picked up a KG entry on July 19th:
Here, the Knowledge Graph entry is informational, and doesn't seem to have a brand/entity association. So, before we go off on the "BIG BRANDS GET ALL THE BREAKS!" warpath, I think we have to take a deep breath and try to get a handle on the facts. My gut feeling is that Google has bumped up the volume on the Knowledge Graph, letting KG entries appear more frequently.
In many cases, this seems to have benefited brands, but keep two things in mind: (1) Many of these brands are small, and (2) That could be a side effect and not the primary intent. The simple fact is that brands are entities, and as Google builds a "web of things," entities are going to gain ground and pages are likely going to lose ground.
Update (August 21st)
In the comments, Will Critchlow pointed out that Nectar is a well-known brand in the UK. When you search "nectar" on Google.co.uk, the entity/brand association is much clearer:
So, essentially, 19 out of the 20 queries on that list were brand-related, with "forex" being ambiguous depending on the context. This also clearly shows the impact of localization and the complexity of how KG entries are being triggered.
Nice spot Pete. Just one little note - Nectar is a very well-known brand in the UK. It's a major loyalty card / network and most brits would recognise the brand.
Ah, interesting - thanks, Will. I see the same search on Google.co.uk produces a full KG for the brand. Now it makes sense why it's a bit ambiguous for Google.com. So, basically, 19/20 of the searches are brands :) I've added that info (and a screenshot) to the end of the post.
Talking about brands, in Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland) Forex is pretty much a brand term for Forex Bank (eg. forexbank.dk) and the KG appearing for that term in Denmark and Finland is focused on the bank, in Sweden they get to KG boxes, one from Wikipedia, one from the bank.
Could it be, that searches which are entities in some markets are more likely to spawn KG across the board?
Your example and the "nectar" example certainly seem to suggest that, if a query is getting KG in one location/country, it could influence the likelihood in other places. That's pretty speculative at this point, but it's plausible.
Great post. Regarding the question raised about Google-Wikipedia update frequency, we did a study at Conductor a little while back that showed that 20% of Knowledge Graph entries were out of date and of those that were out of data half lagged by two days or more: https://www.conductor.com/blog/2012/06/1-out-of-5-google-knowledge-graph-entries-for-trending-keywords-are-outdated/
So, that gives us a bit of a sense of Knowledge Graph update frequency (although the study dates back to last year and things may have changed since then).
There seems to be some degree of personalisation at work here too - https://www.google.com/search?q=moz&gl=us&pws=0 gives me a knowledge graph result, but if I don't fiddle with the search string and just do a Google.com search (from the UK) for Moz, I don't get a knowledge graph result.
Also, if I change the =us to =uk in that search string, I get a slightly different knowledge graph result (the former includes a music-related suggestions, the latter doesn't).
This search brings me a German Newspaper :)
MOZ = Märkische OderZeitung ...
Its also the daily newspaper for my region... but theres no knowledge arround :)
Remember that Moz is also the nickname of the leader of The Smith, British band people of my age surely remember :).
KG is based by localization, as everything in Google, and knowledge base is different from country to country (or language)
The Smiths are for all ages (thanks to their timeless music) and Moz (Morrissey) is still active as a solo artist by the way!
I should note that the data collection system that spotted this change is de-personalized, so, yes, some of the queries may appear differently to some people. These Google+ boxes and "brand" boxes seem tied to a brand appearing in the #1 position, at least to some degree. I'm definitely seeing different results internationally, as you said.
The Smith
sorry may be i am to young for this band - I heard the name but thats all :)
yes, some of the queries may appear differently to some people
I think it has to be different - I mean when someone in my region is searching for MOZ he surely wants to see the newspaper.
It may be possible that I am the only one who normaly wants to see moz.com -> it is a really small village in the middle of nowhere, or like we say in german JWD = Janz Weit Draussen :)
Thatswhy I am working 80km far in Berlin...
Fascinating stuff, Dr. Pete. I very much appreciate you clarifying the meaning of "brand" in a semantic context, namely as a named corporate entity (i.e. an organization). But the Knowledge Graph result for "vegetarian food" may not "seem to have a brand/entity association" the use of "brand/entity" becomes problematic.
"Vegetarian food" may not be a brand, but it very much an entity, possessing a dereferenceable URI and possessing relationships to other entities. It is simply an entity of the type "thing" (as in your reference to the "web of things") rather than a named entity. So there is no dichotomy between entities and, well, other things that appear as headwords in Knowledge Graph verticals: they are all entities.
The Key quote from the article in my opinion is...
"as Google builds a "web of things," entities are going to gain ground and pages are likely going to lose ground."
We need to start optimizing entities, not websites. That's really a fundamental shift in SEO I think. It begs two questions...
1) How do we make something an entity
2) How do we optimize that entity to ensure it receives proper visibility
Great topic for debate....
That's somewhat what I was saying.
I personally love the knowledge graph. Provides a great way to get a really quick snippet of info about whatever it is that you're looking for.
It's quite interesting that Google would elect to include broad terms like "cheap tickets" in the knowledge graph. They must figure the majority of searchers are interested specifically in CheapTickets.com, not any other website offering cheap tickets for anything other than travel. Either way you look at it, It's a major win for CheapTickets.com to have been validated by Google to anyone searching for "cheap tickets".
you're probably right. That seems to be a direct influence of the Knowledge Base.
Since wikipedia is edited by the public (I've edited a few) it would seem wise to make sure the brand you represent is on there. Perhaps in the form of a brand article or sometimes with a relevant subject that includes a mention. I can see how this can get REALLY dishonest REALLY fast. But, it could also be a nice pointer to Google, "hey, I'm over here and this is what I'm about".
That's a good idea, but unfortunately if you represent a smaller/newer brand that isn't "notable" enough for Wikipedia you may have trouble getting an article for your brand on there. It's great that Google is showing more brands in the KG and not just the big ones, but for now it still seems pretty arbitrary for the small man trying to compete.
A lot of "brand" boxes seem to be coming from Google+ as well. As Joshua implied, I don't think people should rush to spam Wikipedia - we're not clear on how Google gets and updates the data, and Wikipedia has its own safeguards in place. Making sure Wikipedia entries are accurate, etc. is a good bet, but it might be more advantageous to build your G+ profile and other brand signals. Eventually, Google will create more and more KG entries dynamically - I think Wikipedia, Freebase, etc. are just a starting point for them to build the core engine.
The absolutely fantastic suggestion "not to spam Wikipedia", because many of the SEO (there is absolutely some, not most) would be thinking to do this.
I could also see a brand's Wikipedia page outranking its site for its own keywords once they have an entry on it.
Dr Pete--Thank you for your insights! Is there any correlation of KG with type of structured data used by the website? Just wondering if the use of Microdata, RDFa, or Microformats makes a difference to KG rich snippet display? Thx in advance for any response.
For now, most of this data is coming from 3rd-party sources (like Wikipedia, Freebase, the CIA Fact Book, etc.), with some variations coming out of Google+ (or supplemented by Google+ data). I think Google will start to take more data sources including microdata into account, but they're naturally hesitant to open up the Knowledge Graph to manipulation. At this moment, we don't have a ton of control over how/when they appear, but this is a situation that I expect to evolve rapidly over the next 1-2 years. I think the big lesson for SEOs is just: pay attention.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I am not only paying attention, I am obsessed . One item of interest I wanted to share is a Google WMT support page on structured data. Scroll down to the bottom of this page,Google Structured Data instructions
After listing the various structured data types, the word 'recommended' appears next to microdata. That would mean preferred to me. Am I misinterpreting this? I just recently discovered the political warfare that goes on between microdata and microformat communities, with some peeps saying that microdata and schema are dying on the vine.
So confusing for the plebs like me.
I would note that the images for brand or entity entries in the KG often come from weird, 3rd party sources. Particularly when said brand or entity does not have a verified name/website.
Nice post Dr. Pete.
2 questions:
1.) Do you feel that this gives an advantage to the B2B space and makes it more important to have a dealer locator or other quick searches for product availability on sites?
Not the best example but for ambiguity: A search for "Apple" gives you the KG and Apple home page and then you have to use apple.com to find a store. This now replaces the top results from Google maps where it would tell you where the closest locations were before.
2.) Have you seen that this will benefit companies that were previously showing under competitor paid ads targeting brand keywords and is more likely that these ads will show under the KG?
(1) I've seen small-to-medium brands get Knowledge Graph entries, even local shops. I think it's going to get tougher for resellers, affiliates, and price comparison sites. Google is looking for "entities" and entities tend to exist in the real world or have a real world counterpart.
(2) They're experimenting actively with ad and KG placement on the right, as well as paid inclusion. It's hard to say. In some cases, having KG may not even be good for you - it's compelling, but it's diverting people from organic. If you're a local restaurant, and just want people to know when you're open, KG may be great. If you need to drive visits and page views for ad revenue, KG could be fatal.
After you published the KG research data a few days back I was doing some more research for it and now you published some more. Thanks for the more insights on Knowledge graph.
For those who wish to know more about Knowledge Graph here is the direct link
Thanks Pete sir for this important update but what really shocks me is that people didn't talk about this at all!
One piece of information I can share is that our branded PPC & branded organic volume appears to be impacted by this in a negative way so far (just from our data.. not sure about others).
If you search for certain brands, the SERP will now often show competitors with logos. For market leaders, this could translate to a meaningful loss in branded traffic and is probably worth looking into if you manage campaigns for brands impacted by this knowledge graph update.
On the flip-side, I have noticed our site showing up for other competitor brand queries as well, but it doesn't seem to balance out for us at the moment. Anyway, not trying to make a blanket claim, but wanted to share a data point we are seeing so far with my fellow Mozzers. Wonder if others might be seeing a similar result.
Fascinating stuff, Pete! I'd be curious to see what other 800+ queries made the cut - would you say a large percentage of those were also brand associations?
Unfortunately, there was no way to categorize them, other than by hand, so I'm not entirely sure. My gut reaction, on scanning the list, was that brand/entity associations made up a decent chunk.
Hi Peter !You always come with new excited facts and figures regarding digital market and SEO knowledge for the readers and whenever I read your posts , I got amazed by your collection of data and analysis record .You knowledge graph study explodes real and amazing facts regarding brands and their association with others.
quote "As Google builds a "web of things," entities are going to gain ground and pages are likely going to lose ground" .. great post. Thanks for analysis and share. Eugenio (SEO)
Your blogs are fantastic, useful and your articles are wonderful.
Great post!
I found that Google KG prioritizes the Freebase information against the Wikipedia information when the data is not the same in this two sources. But I have two questions:
1. Do you know which is the proccess they follow to acept/reject an edition in the freebase data? How long does this proccess take?
2. A part from the personal edition by users, which sources does freebase user to complete its information?
Thank you!
I def. could be wrong but I (before reading this blog post) thought I noticed an enhancement to the definitions non-sidebar KG after clicking on a now-existent down arrow (unless I just never noticed this arrow etc.): https://screencast.com/t/ueoaySmL4e4
Query = https://www.google.com/search?q=ossify
That new definitions box just went up last week, I think. Are you saying that it expanded automatically (and you never saw/clicked the arrow)?
Nectar is quite big in the UK, the food retailer, Sainsburys created it. All UK based people who do their weekly food shop in Sainsburys will know what Nectar is. Sainsburys is a big brand in the UK.
Great analysis, Dr. Pete; thank you for sharing! I do think it's odd how Google seems to be generalizing some KG information (e.g., the 'army games' example).
It's also interesting to see some of these results show competitors brand in the KG panel . EG :
https://www.google.com/search?q=tractor+supply
You get a section in the KG panel witht he title People also search for and there are 4-5 competitor brand in there. I certanly dont want to see that for my branded searches. Would be interested to learn more about why they are triggered for cerain results but not for others.
Since google is not concerned about anyone's competitor (otherwise there should be only 1 result for a given search query) so IMHO it is not a matter of concern for us too.
Thanks for the Post Pete,
I work for a big corp with many major brands probably around 50 that are very well known and we went from 3 knowledge graphs to about 15 around the same time and all three of the small business sites I run personally got them the around the same time for branded queries. I am going to try are reverse engineer the non branded knowledge box to see if there are any best practices, I can pull.
Oh man... it seems that knowledge graph is taking over! I agree with @snousain above as the quick snipet is helpful! Thanks Dr. Pete
This divergence in link results versus KG results is interesting. As Google tries to match strings with things they are pushing the line further in the KG than links.
Does this have a tie in with conversational search? Is Google betting that people will do classic keyword searches for entities and brands such as, "chicken recipes" but use more natural language for informational searches "how do I make chicken".
So that's where my graph came from, I've also seen a TON more graphs when I'm logged in and search a particular SEOs name. Also, Rand's knowledge graph seems to of disappeared? I did however see Matthew Woodward pick up his graph last month as well! :) https://gyazo.com/b293e04bfe0dd4cab10af227e699e1a0.png
Remember that KG is funded also on Knowledge Base, hence on input (read search volume). Rand appeared in the Knowledge Graph for a period as a result of "people also searched for" in other people KG boxes (I.e. Danny Sullivan), and also because Google was associating Rand with the Wiki entry of Seomoz.
More over, Rand doesn't have a Wiki entry (and quite possibly neither a Freebase one). So all the entity information KG has is from his G+ profiles, and that is what is shown to you if you have it in your Circles and you are in a personalized environment.
What's odd is that a lot of big brands have not, so far, had KG entries. I think the KG boxes for people (except celebrities) are being driven more and more directly from Google+, but the logic on when/how they appear is really unclear.
Yeah - it looks like the Wikipedia entry for me was once again removed, and Google was using the Moz Wikipedia entry but seems to have dropped that one (at least for my name).
nice answer sir !!!
Dr. Pete,
This is a great blog post. It definitely reinforces the need to not jump to conclusions; rather look at as much data as possible.
Quick question: How do you look find search query data from July?
We have our own data source, based on the same engine that drives the Mozcast site, so I have historical data for Page 1 for that set of 10K queries. The system collects data on features, like Knowledge Graph, but there's no dashboard yet, so I didn't see the change until I was poring through the data.
Pete Sir,
I am your biggest fan, i always find some new stuffs in your post and it helps me to collect more and more information. Its an effective post to read.
I have one question: What is the role of SEO for Big Brands as they don't depend on the Ranking Factors in comparison of other small companies.?
Great article Doc. I have been noticing a lot more nonbranded queries populating the KG for my clients. For example, if you search "boutique hotel seattle" by client's hotel appears via mapbox. This has been happening for a while though. The more recent development, the one that is associated, I believe, with this July KG update, is the query "engagement rings." The first KG box that pops up is from Wikipedia, which isn't anywhere on page one of the SERP. This is nothing new, either, but the box beneath it is: a branded answer box for Tiffany & Co. Even more interesting, is that Tiff & Co isn't even the first result in the SERP, it's #4, beneath Zales, Kays and Bluenile. So even though Tiff isn't the #1 result in the SERP, the answer box most strongly associates "engagement rings" with Tiffany, over higher ranking brands. This was a big win, and it makes me wonder what signals created this result. A strong G+ presence? Anchor text in our link profile? More citations on pages about the query?
Thanks,
Matt
On August 2, I also found this problem,Also wrote a blog to analysis（Google in the search results highlight the brand effect）。the content of the brand in the right side of the display is very rich, have replaced the original AD position. The Google pay more and more attention to brand building. These contents are mostly come from wikipedia, but I didn't find it。
Thanks for sharing
Nice Blog ..It is helpful
WOW. Fascinating and scary all at the same time. Thanks for the great insight.
Just a note for clarity: even though Google+ boxes (personal, business pages and google plus local) can be rightly considered of the same "things not string" family of Knowledge Graph, they are not strictly Knowledge Graph boxes.
I should say that my definition of "Knowledge Graph", from a data collection standpoint, is a technical one based on the CSS container that Google uses (class="kno-fb-ctx"). This casts a fairly wide net, and may include some things people wouldn't typically view as "the Knowledge Graph". Over time, I'll probably differentiate between them more based on internal containers within the master class.
Thanks Dr Pete.
Any idea of how often these KG entries get updated from sources, or how long they take to be updated? Especially when they contain errors.
Here's a related example - not quite a full KG entry, but more search result 'card' - which shows incorrect information (and has done for months), even though the normal organic results are all correct:
https://www.craigbailey.net/surprising-google-search-card-error/
Google seems to be pulling the incorrect data from somewhere - but Freebase and Wikipedia are both correct.
It seems that these KG boxes don't appear on google.fr
Do you know where they appear apart from .com and .co.uk?
Try some French companies - for example, here's one for Peugeot:
https://www.google.fr/#fp=d196a2dac4c25b78&q=Peugeot
Yes, thank you. It doesn't work for international brands, even if it works on google.com
Do you think that the big change on 7/19 was on all versions of Google?
I'm seeing French brand results on Google.fr - I wonder if that's a result of being US-based. I do get the sense that Knowledge Graph penetration is much lower in some international markets, but I don't have data on that.
Maybe it is just a correlation thing, but if you check out the documents present in the different language versions of Wikipedia (from where Google picks up the vast majority of the information), you will see how much lower Spanish, Italian or French (to not talk of other languages) entries are respect to the English ones.
More over, the Google+ Business Pages are less common outside of the Anglo-Saxon marketing world
Yeah, I think the issue of KG in other languages isn't one of roll-out or policy, but that Google just doesn't have the data yet to build out these functions. Unlike many ranking factors, KG requires language- and region-specific data, in many cases.
Thank you Gianluca and Peter, your answers make sense.
Thanks for the Great Post Pete!! Insightful stuff.. Its been good to know about the phrase "Brand". Thanks for sharing.