RankPay SEO Blog

Google’s Knowledge Graph

We’ve had a few weeks now to learn a little more about Google’s Knowledge Graph which rolled-out in late May.  The enhancement marks a shift in Google’s efforts to build a smarter, intelligent search engine that is more likely to understand what you mean when you search for ambiguous queries.

Knowledge Graph is based on semantic search learning which refers to the ability to understand that the same words or phrase will mean different things to different searchers depending on the context. For instance, searching on “mercury” may mean the user is interested in Mercury the planet, the ancient winged God, the chemical element, a car, the record label, or a restaurant down the road.

It is how the searcher uses the word which will give a clue to what the search intent actually is, so if you typed in “mercury music” historically, then it’s a good chance you are interested in only musical results and not researching the planet, or the car company.

The Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph is part of Google’s evolving investments as they help their consumer audience narrow down what it is they are looking for.  So far, the major examples seem to be restricted to people, historical events and specific objects, such as paintings, landmarks and of course, elemental terms such as ‘mercury’.

Knowledge Graph relies on Google’s ability to make connections between present results and the best set of connections it believes you are interested in from the search term. If it gets it wrong in the initial set of organic results, then a graphical and factual set of representations are given in the right hand side of the search page.

Implications for SEO

Site owners and marketers should take Knowledge Graph into consideration as they’re embarking in their keyword selection process for SEO as the implementation on the results page would mean that the algorithmic results may fall lower on the page, and therefore, less visible, or the set of results might change entirely.  However, as noted — Knowledge Graph seems to be limited on its’ impact regarding commercial search terms, and there is a strong likelihood that this will continue.

As we’ve seen with Panda and Penguin – Google’s laser focus on delivering unique, fresh, relevant results prominently on the page will accelerate, therefore, Knowledge Graph also reinforces that sites’ must continue to work diligently on their own unique content creation.


Knowledge Graph is Google’s effort to create an even more advanced-intelligent search engine utilizing semantic search.  Currently, roll out is restricted to the US, however a global roll-out is imminent. Commercial search terms are relatively unaffected; however it is likely that Knowledge Graph will be applied, at least in part, to some terms as the page implementation and layout continues to evolve.  In turn, this will mean that the critical process of Keyword identification and selection will become increasingly more important when you’re beginning to optimize in search.

Click here to see it in action.