Tesco Tech Support Blog

Google Knowledge Graph tells you what you need to know

Posted: 22nd May 2012

When Google burst on to the search scene it had one defining factor that separated it from its rivals. The homepage was simple, just a logo and a text box, and the results it returned from a search categorised as a straightforward list based on its infamous PageRank algorithms.

Nowadays, of course, there’s much more to Google than that. You have different ways to search, page previews and a top bar that takes you to Google+ or your email. It searches your contacts and web history to decide what you might like, and feeds all this into deciding what results to give you.

Its latest innovation, Knowledge Graph , is something else completely, though. If it works, you may never need to leave Google’s homepage again.

What Knowledge Graph does it take information from sites found by your search and present them on the right hand side of the page along with the rest of your results. So looking for ‘Albert Einstein’, for example, will bring up a biography taken from the great scientist’s Wikipedia entry as well as key facts about his life and work.

Search for a well known actor, and their filmography will appear as well. Look for a town and you’ll get a potted history and links to landmarks.

The key thing about Knowledge Graph is that it’s using information that’s freely available elsewhere on the web, and combining it in a form that’s user friendly and simple to get to.

Google engineers liken it to a ‘Star Trek computer’ which gives you information and when you ask for it, rather than having to go through an extra step of clicking on a link once the search is done. In those terms, it also sounds remarkably similar to Siri.

Right now Knowledge Graph is currently available in the US only, but is planned for the rest of the world soon. Keep an eye out on Google’s homepage for more.

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