TheKnowledge Graph is aknowledge base from whichGoogle serves relevant information in an infobox beside itssearch results. This allows the user to see the answer in a glance, as aninstant answer. The data is generated automatically from a variety of sources, covering places, people, businesses, and more.[1][2]
The information covered by Google's Knowledge Graph grew quickly after launch, tripling its data size within seven months (covering 570 million entities and 18 billion facts[3]). By mid-2016, Google reported that it held 70 billion facts[4] and answered "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches they handled. By May 2020, this had grown to 500 billion facts on 5 billion entities.[5]
There is no official documentation of how the Google Knowledge Graph is implemented.[6] According to Google, its information is retrieved from many sources, including theCIA World Factbook andWikipedia.[7]It is used to answer direct spoken questions inGoogle Assistant[8][9] andGoogle Home voice queries.[10] It has been criticized for providing answers with neither source attribution norcitations.[11]
Google announced its Knowledge Graph on May 16, 2012, as a way to significantly enhance the value of information returned by Google searches.[7] Initially available only in English, it was expanded in December 2012 toSpanish,French,German,Portuguese,Japanese,Russian andItalian.[12]Bengali support was added in March 2017.[13]
The Knowledge Graph was powered in part byFreebase.[7]
In August 2014,New Scientist reported that Google had launched aKnowledge Vault project.[14] After publication, Google reached out toSearch Engine Land to explain that Knowledge Vault was a research report, not an active Google service.Search Engine Land expressed indications that Google was experimenting with "numerous models" for gathering meaning from text.[15]
Google's Knowledge Vault was meant to deal with facts, automatically gathering and merging information from across the Internet into a knowledge base capable of answering direct questions, such as "Where wasMadonna born?" In a 2014 report, the Vault was reported to have collected over 1.6 billion facts, 271 million of which were considered "confident facts" deemed to be more than 90% true. It was reported to be different from the Knowledge Graph in that it gathered information automatically instead of relying on crowd-sourced facts compiled by humans.[15]
A Google Knowledge Panel[16] which is part of Google search engine result pages, presents an overview of entities such as individuals, organizations, locations, or objects directly within the search interface. This feature uses data from Google Knowledge Graph,[17] an extensive database that organizes and interconnects information about entities, enhancing the retrieval and presentation of relevant content to users.
By May 2016, knowledge boxes were appearing for "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches the company processed.[11] Dario Taraborelli, head of research at theWikimedia Foundation, toldThe Washington Post that Google's omission of sources in its knowledge boxes "undermines people’s ability to verify information and, ultimately, to develop well-informed opinions". The publication also reported that the boxes are "frequently unattributed", such as a knowledge box on the age of actressBetty White, which is "as unsourced and absolute as if handed down by God".[11]
According toThe Register in 2014 the display of direct answers in knowledge panels alongside Google search results caused significant readership declines forWikipedia, from which the panels obtained some of their information.[18] Also in 2014,The Daily Dot noted that "Wikipedia still has no real competitor as far as actual content is concerned. All that's up for grabs are traffic stats. And as a nonprofit, traffic numbers don't equate into revenue in the same way they do for a commercial media site". After the article's publication, a spokesperson for theWikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, stated that it "welcomes" the knowledge panel functionality, that it was "looking into" the traffic drops, and that "We've also not noticed a significant drop in search engine referrals. We also have a continuing dialog with staff from Google working on the Knowledge Panel".[19]
In his 2020 book,Dariusz Jemielniak noted that as most Google users do not realize that many answers to their questions that appear in the Knowledge Graph come from Wikipedia, this reduces Wikipedia's popularity, and in turn limited the site's ability to raise new funds and attract new volunteers.[20]
The algorithm has been criticized for presenting biased or inaccurate information, usually because of sourcing information from websites with highsearch engine optimization. It had been noted in 2014 that while there was a Knowledge Graph for most major historical or pseudo-historicalreligious figures such asMoses,Muhammad andGautama Buddha, there was none forJesus, the central figure ofChristianity.[21][22] On June 3, 2021, a knowledge box identifiedKannada as the ugliest language in India, prompting outrage from the Kannada-language community; the state ofKarnataka, where most Kannada speakers live, also threatened to sue Google for damaging the public image of the language. Google promptly changed the featured snippet for the search query and issued a formal apology.[23][24]
It's a system that understands facts and information about entities from materials shared across the web, as well as from open source and licensed databases. It has amassed over 500 billion facts about five billion entities.
