Is Google Knowledge Graph / Knowledge Base a threat?

[akirk]

An interesting article about planned Google changes here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/201...hings-not.html

and a review by the Telegraph (as a consumer perspective) here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...t-answers.html

The move (not just Google) is towards search engine results which answer your need - not just guide you to the website...
i.e. the search engines want to pull enough information from your site to mean that the web user doesn't need to come to visit you - they will get their answer within Google and move on...
This has some interesting implications:

- will providing structured authoritative data make you attractive to the search engines?
- how do you provide the precise balance of content to make you attractive to a search engine wanting to provide the complete answer - give the viewer the impression that you know what you are talking about - but still leave something untapped so that they need to visit you...

precise website content will become very critical
perhaps you will need two layers of information - one for the search engines and a second 'restrcited' section not available to them, but viewable by humans - how do you do that without cloaking (penalised by SE) or complex coding?

There is a definite trend from guide to answer - much in the same way that Facebook would like to be the internet - so would Google et al... both approaches are doing it with your content - they have nothing without the content providers - but they want to then strip you out of the profitable bit - building a relationship with the user...

perhaps it is time to decide whether we want our content to build their solutions?

Alasdair

Merged this post into this thread as it is on a related topic - but this thread is more suited as host thread...

[Clinton]

Apparently searches are going to get a lot better as Google's developed a better ability at answering questions. This recent Google announcement has been covered at various venues including Venturebeat who say Google's developed a new and better "brain". Google's now going to answer a wider range of questions for you at Google itself.

For example, yesterday, Google could parse your search for “roots” as five letters that might have a connection to a wide range of URLs. Today, Google knows you are probably searching for The Roots (the music group) or or Roots (the TV miniseries) or roots (the biological feature of plants), and it will help you get to the best results for that object faster.

Google's apparently taking the content/data for their answers from Wikipedia, Freebase, MusicBrainz (an open encyclopedia of music facts), the CIA’s World Factbook, and other publicly available open data.

Open data?

How long before they start taking "closed" data i.e. data on your site and my site that we use to attract the traffic we monetise? They've done it in the past with weather, traffic, definitions and much else (Try a define: search in Google and you used to get the full answer Google extracted from commercial sites. The problem is that Google answers the question for the searcher and removes the need for them to visit your site. I call it theft, but others haven't been so charitable).

Anyway, how long do you think it'll be before Google starts using closed data for Knowledge Base? How long before sites with open data realise that Joe Public using their open data is one thing, but a large commercial beast like Google using it is quite something else especially if it has the potential to impact on their ability to generate and maintain that data?

[Mikl]

Clinton, I came to very similar conclusions when I read about this. It's seems obvious that, for a certain type of query, authoratative sites are going to suffer a drop in traffic because of this. To use the example which Google gives in its blog post, if I want some quick facts about Marie Curie, and I search for that name, the results page could give me all the information I need, without my ever clicking through to an actual site.

It remains to be seen on what scale that happens. Maybe it will only affect a very small number of searches. We'll have to wait and see.

Mike

[BentAnat]

The thing is, that Google at the end of the day makes money off of you NOT leaving their "silo", and this seems to me to be a move in an effort to achieve that.
It's also something that's been happening more and more. define:, translate: and a bunch more.
The issue with it is that they're running independents out of the business by doing so. I bet that anyone with a dictionary site has lost HUGE amounts of traffic since Google introduced define:, and if big G were to push the keyword aggressively for a while, they'd probably force most of the players in that field out of the market.

Google is facing an issue in that though, and that is that they'll lose advertisers the moment these stop being able to make money off their sites.
And as such, I reckon that this is not going to be nearly as heavy on splash as some people are expecting...

[JJMcClure]

The issue with it is that they're running independents out of the business by doing so. I bet that anyone with a dictionary site has lost HUGE amounts of traffic since Google introduced define:, and if big G were to push the keyword aggressively for a while, they'd probably force most of the players in that field out of the market.

If those players were reliant on traffic from Google then it wasn't a market, it was a bubble.

Google is facing an issue in that though, and that is that they'll lose advertisers the moment these stop being able to make money off their sites.
And as such, I reckon that this is not going to be nearly as heavy on splash as some people are expecting...

Exactly. I don't think Google are going to push this too hard because they'll lose a lot of Adwords and Adsense revenue (which are their main earners), and when people realise that Google aren't sending them traffic anymore they might get off their arses and implement something to block the Google bot to stop Google using their content. If Google aren't scratching my back anymore, I won't be scratching theirs, a symbiotic relationship only works as long as both parties are getting something from the deal.

[akirk]

Exactly. I don't think Google are going to push this too hard because they'll lose a lot of Adwords and Adsense revenue (which are their main earners), and when people realise that Google aren't sending them traffic anymore they might get off their arses and implement something to block the Google bot to stop Google using their content. If Google aren't scratching my back anymore, I won't be scratching theirs, a symbiotic relationship only works as long as both parties are getting something from the deal.

nothing to stop them analysing the presence of adsense on a website (and the success of that advertising) and then choosing when to include content / send folks to a website...

Alasdair

[Mikl]

nothing to stop them analysing the presence of adsense on a website (and the success of that advertising) and then choosing when to include content / send folks to a website...

Surely they wouldn't be that devious? Would they? Trustworthy old Google?

Mike

[BentAnat]

If those players were reliant on traffic from Google then it wasn't a market, it was a bubble.

You're spot on. Many of the effected sites will be "bubble players" if you will.

[Clinton]

It looks like Knowledge Graph is paying off for Google: Google searches surge after Knowledge Graph.

Other folk aren't so sure and comments in webmasterworld etc., say to take Google's own stats with a pinch of salt. They also suggest that any increase in searches is because searchers are having difficulty finding what they want.

[bwelford]

Other folk aren't so sure and comments in webmasterworld etc., say to take Google's own stats with a pinch of salt. They also suggest that any increase in searches is because searchers are having difficulty finding what they want.

LOL. There always will be glass-half full and glass-half empty people and they really do see very different pictures.