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Knowledge Graph: Google Officially Announces Its “Things” Results
Google says this makes it smarter
By Chris Crum
Google has formally announced the “Knowledge Graph,” its way of providing results about “things”. We’ve reported on the products of this a couple of times, as Google has been testing them.
An example would be when you search for a band, and Google puts some boxes on the side of the search results page with some specific info about that band. Likewise for movies, actors, books and people. According to the company, it also includes landmarks, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, celestial objects, works of art, and more.
The main theme of the Knowledge Graph, as Google is presenting it, is that it is making Google smarter and better at giving you answers. Better at distinguishing what you mean by certain queries, which may come with more than one meaning. Googles gives the example of Taj Mahal: “do you mean Taj Mahal the monument, or Taj Mahal the musician? Now Google understands the difference, and can narrow your search results just to the one you mean.”
Google put out the following video talking about it:
According to the WSJ article, Google’s 2010 acquisition of Metaweb plays a significant role in what is now known as the Knowledge Graph.
“Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook,” says Singhal. “It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.”
I’m guessing there’s some Google Squared in there too.
“How do we know which facts are most likely to be needed for each item? For that, we go back to our users and study in aggregate what they’ve been asking Google about each item,” explains Singhal. “For example, people are interested in knowing what books Charles Dickens wrote, whereas they’re less interested in what books Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, and more in what buildings he designed.”
The Knowledge Graph is “gradually” rolling out to U.S. users in English.
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.
Posted under Google, SEO, Social Media, Web Development | No Comments
Google Gives Search a Refresh
By AMIR EFRATI
Google Inc. GOOG +0.89%
is giving its tried-and-true Web-search formula a makeover as it tries to fix the shortcomings of today’s technology and maintain its dominant market share.
Over the next few months, Google’s search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at the top of the search-results page.
![[GOOGLE]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BS913_GOOGLE_DV_20120314190006.jpg "Website Development Google Search")
Google’s Amit Singhal, shown in 2009, sees better matches for queries.
The changes to search are among the biggest in the company’s history and could affect millions of websites that rely on Google’s current page-ranking results. At the same time, they could give Google more ways to serve up advertisements.
Google isn’t replacing its current keyword-search system, which determines the importance of a website based on the words it contains, how often other sites link to it, and dozens of other measures. Rather, the company is aiming to provide more relevant results by incorporating technology called “semantic search,” which refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.
Amit Singhal, a top Google search executive, said in a recent interview that the search engine will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of “entities”—people, places and things—which the company has quietly amassed in the past two years. Semantic search can help associate different words with one another, such as a company (Google) with its founders ( Larry Page and Sergey Brin).
Powering up the Search Engine
Google is adding semantic technology to its keyword search system.
Keyword Search
- Determines the importance of websites based on the words it contains, links to those sites and dozens of other measures.
- Also factors in the person searching, such as his location and the time of day.
Semantic Search
- Refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.
- Can differentiate between words with more than one meaning, such as the car brand ‘Jaguar’ and the animal ‘jaguar.’
Google search will look more like “how humans understand the world,” Mr. Singhal said, noting that for many searches today, “we cross our fingers and hope there’s a Web page out there with the answer.” Some major changes will show up in the coming months, people familiar with the initiative said, but Mr. Singhal said Google is undergoing a years-long process to enter the “next generation of search.”
Under the shift, people who search for “Lake Tahoe” will see key “attributes” that the search engine knows about the lake, such as its location, altitude, average temperature or salt content. In contrast, those who search for “Lake Tahoe” today would get only links to the lake’s visitor bureau website, its dedicated page on Wikipedia.com, and a link to a relevant map.
For a more complex question such as, “What are the 10 largest lakes in California?” Google might provide the answer instead of just links to other sites.
To provide answers that aren’t already in Google’s ever-expanding database, the company will blend new semantic-search technology with its current system to better recognize the value of information on websites and figure out which ones to show in search results. It would do so by examining a Web page and identifying information about specific entities referenced on it, rather than only look for keywords.
The coming shift has major implications for Google, which dominates the Internet search market with around 66% market share and more than 75% of all search-ad revenue. The Mountain View, Calif., company has succeeded because of the strength and ease of its keyword-search technology, which in turn fueled Google’s search ads, which appear next to search results. That business now generates the majority of Google’s $37 billion in annual revenue.
Now Google is taking action to maintain that lead. The Internet giant is trying to stay ahead of Microsoft Corp.’s
MSFT +0.21%
Bing in Web search, catch up to Apple Inc.’s
AAPL -0.68%
Siri voice-activated mobile search, and beat back rivals in niches such as product search.
Some semantic-search experts also believe the move will help Google to keep up with Facebook Inc., the social network that also has amassed a database about hundreds of millions of people, places and things but hasn’t offered a robust search service.
Google also hopes the change to semantic search will entice some people to stay longer on the search site, said people briefed on the plans, amid competition with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter Inc. that are claiming more Internet users’ time.
For instance, people who search for a particular novelist like Ernest Hemingway could, under the new system, find a list of the author’s books they could browse through and information pages about other related authors or books, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Presumably Google could suggest books to buy, too.
A Google spokesman declined comment about the potential changes.
Google says it is still tinkering with the new look and function of its search engine, so it’s unclear exactly what this might mean for Google users and website owners. But the move could spur millions of websites to retool their Web page—by changing what’s called a “markup language”—so the search engine could more easily locate them under the new system, said Larry Cornett, a former Web-search executive at Yahoo Inc.
One person briefed on Google’s plans said the shift to semantic search could directly impact the search results for 10% to 20% of all search queries, or tens of billions per month.
It’s also unclear exactly how Google’s search ads—which appear next to search results and are handled by separate teams inside the company—would change in response to the overhaul. But people briefed on the initiative said that if the search engine better understands the meaning or intent behind people’s search queries, Google could find a way to show them more relevant ads.
As people spend more time on Google’s search site looking through its extensive “entity” database, there would also be more pages, or inventory, on which to place ads, said a person with knowledge of the initiative.
Google’s advertising executives have knowledge of the initiative and have considered ways to capitalize on it, said a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Singhal said his team is working independently of any advertising considerations.
Google has previously updated its core Web search technology. Most recently, it began tailoring search results to individual users based on their activity on Google+, the company’s social network, and it is now instantly showing search results before a person has finished typing their search query. Google also can scan thousands of sites and give a “best guess” answer for limited sets of questions, such as, “Who is the chancellor of Germany?”
Google also currently has some other semantic-search elements, such as the ability to assess what the web collectively thinks are the most significant items associated with certain keywords. For example, a search for “30 Rock,” the name of a popular TV series, will bring up a section called “Actor searches for 30 Rock” at the bottom of the search-results page. There, people can find a photo of each actor and a link to execute a new Google search for that name.
But the newest change is expected to go much further, coming as a result of Google’s acquisition in 2010 start-up Metaweb Technologies, which had an index of 12 million entities, such as movies, books, companies and celebrities. By comparison, online encyclopedia Wikipedia has 3.5 million English entries, though they include more detailed information.
Mr. Singhal said Google and the Metaweb team, which then numbered around 50 software engineers, have since expanded the size of the index to more than 200 million entities, partly by developing “extraction algorithms,” or mathematical formulas that can organize data scattered across the Web. It also approached organizations and government agencies to obtain access to databases, including the CIA World Factbook, which houses up-to-date encyclopedic information about countries worldwide.
Posted under Google, Marketing, SEO, Web Development | No Comments
How to Get Actionable Data Out of Google Analytics
via Kissmetrics.com by Kristi Hines
You’ve read a lot about Google Analytics by now, especially here on KISSmetrics. But if you’re not applying what you’ve read, then you’re not going to get what you really want out of Google Analytics. If you are ready to get actionable metrics out of Google Analytics, then here are the things you need to set up NOW!
Track Goals & Conversions
If you have read any of my other posts on Google Analytics, you might notice how I continuously mention setting up Goals. This is because Goals are the purpose of your website’s existence. If you aren’t measuring what leads to the completion of goals on your website, then you are missing out on the most actionable metrics on your website.
Goals can be anything you choose. They can be:
- The purchase of a product
- The completion of an email list sign up
- The download of a whitepaper
- The click of an external link
To set up a goal, simply go to your website’s profile in Google Analytics and click on the settings wheel icon. Here, you will see a tab for Goals.
Click on the +Goal link to begin adding goals. Enter a short, descriptive name for your goal, then select the goal type. The two most useful types are the URL Destination and Event Type.
The URL Destination Goal Type (as shown above) allows you to tell Google Analytics that a goal has been completed when a visitor on your website lands on a specific page. In the above example, if you have a thank you page for subscribers when they sign up for your mailing list, then that URL would be the Goal URL for a goal showing a completed mailing list signup. The URL Destination Goal Type also works great for a thank you page for a contact form submission.
The Event Goal Type (as shown above) allows you to tell Google Analytics that a goal has been completed when a visitor on your website clicks on a particular link or button. This is used when there is not a final destination URL on your own site. In the above example, if you are selling a product that is not on your website, you would add the bolded portion to the HTML code of the link leading to the offsite sales page as shown below.
<a href=”http://salespage.com/” target=”_blank” onClick=”_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action', 'Label']);”>
The parameters in the event tracking script correlate to the Category, Action, and Label needed in the Google Analytics setup. The Event Goal Type also works great for any goals that are completed when a user clicks a button, such as the submit button of a form, download button for a free report, play button of a video, or other action. For a button, you would add the bolded portion to the HTML code of the button.
<input name=”submit” type=”submit” onClick=”_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action', 'Label']);” value=”Submit” />
Actionable Data from Goals
Once you have set up goals, you can peruse the following areas of your Google Analytics to discover more about your most treasured people – those that are completing goals and conversions on your website. To see the following metrics based on goal completions, click on the Goal Set you wish to view under the Explorer tab.
- Under Audience > Demographics > Location, you can use your Goal Sets to see what countries, regions, and cities lead to the most goal conversions. Use this data to determine what locations to target for online advertising through Google AdWords, Facebook, or other networks.
- Under Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic, you can use your Goal Sets to see what traffic sources bring the highest converting visitors. Use this data to find out which traffic sources to focus on for the most targeted traffic.
- Under Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic, you can use your Goal Sets to see what keywords converting visitors use to find your site. Use this data to choose which keywords your website should be focusing on in your SEO strategy.
- Under Content > Site Content > Landing Pages, you can use your Goal Sets to see what landing pages lead to the highest conversions. Use this data to decide what content topics to use on your blog or other pages to lead to more conversions.
Analyze Conversion Funnels
If you have a shopping cart on your website, you can learn about any issues with your checkout system using conversion funnels. These are set up using the URL Destination goal type shown earlier with the exception that you go further by checking the Goal Funnel box. In this section, you will enter the pages that relate to your shopping cart checkout process.
With a conversion funnel, you can visualize the number of people who have started using your checkout system, how far into the process they go, where they exit, and the overall percentage of completions from start to finish.
Actionable Data from Conversion Funnels
Once you have set up a conversion funnel, you can ask the following questions to begin working on an action plan to increase your conversions.
- Where do the most amount of people exit during the checkout process? Be sure to test your checkout process carefully. Also consider evaluating specific pages to see what it is that makes people decide to leave. Can this part of the process be made easier?
- What pages do people go to when they exit? Be sure to take a look at these pages to see if they instill visitors with confidence in your business which should hopefully lead them back to the shopping cart.
- Do people exit the checkout process to visit your return policy page? If so, perhaps adding a short summary of your return policy on the checkout pages might keep people in the shopping cart.
- Do people go back to the same product sales page from which they entered the shopping cart? Maybe some additional details about the product should carry over through the shopping cart process.
Use Advanced Segments
Advanced Segments in Google Analytics allow you to see all of your data based on a specific piece of criteria, such as a particular traffic referrer, demographic, or even one piece of content. To create an Advanced Segment, click on the Advanced Segments tab and then the +New Custom Segment.
First, you will enter a short, descriptive name for your segment. Then you can use the dropdowns to select what dimensions of data to include or exclude from your segment. Click on the Preview Segment button to see if you are getting the right data, then the Save Segment to finish.
Actionable Data from Advanced Segments
In our previous article, we talked about using your traffic sources data to find out which online marketing strategies are driving the best traffic to your website. You can take Advanced Segments further to include the following actionable data.
- Find out where the highest converting visitors are from using your Goals, then create an Advanced Segment for visitors from those areas using the location dimensions (Continent, Country/Territory, City, or Region). Use this segment to learn more about visitors from those locations including the top traffic sources that bring them to your website, what content they visit the most, and more. Use this data to find out what traffic sources to focus on and what content to create to cater to your most converting audience.
- Learn everything about the behavior of visitors who enter your site using a particular keyword by creating an Advanced Segment using the keyword dimension. Create multiple segments for different keywords and view them simultaneously for comparison. Use this data to find out if you are targeting the right keywords.
- Have you recently run a huge promotional campaign directed towards one page on your website? Create an Advanced Segment using the Page dimension and the page’s URL (everything after http://domain.com/). Then you can view all of the Analytics data for that page only to see which promotion types (social media, press releases, blogger outreach, etc.) brought in the most traffic. Use this to learn what types of promotion to apply to future campaigns.
- Want to know what new visitors to your site do compared to returning visitors? Create two Advanced Segments using the Visitor Type dimension – one containing New Visitor and one containing Returning Visitor. View both segments simultaneously to compare Analytics data. Use this data to see what content new visitors are most attracted to and returning visitors can’t get enough of so you can create more of both.
Posted under Google, SEO | No Comments
Google Algorithm: New Updates Announced
Google has been making a big deal about wanting to be more transparent about its search algorithm lately (without revealing the secret sauce too much of course). And so far, I have to say they’re making good on that promise fairly well.
We’ve seen plenty of algorithmic announcements made from the company over the course of the year. Earlier this month, they discussed ten recent changes they had made. Now, they’ve put out a similar post on the Inside Search Blog, revealing ten more that have been made since than post.
Google lists them as follows:
- Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”
- More comprehensive indexing: This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.
- New “parked domain” classifier: This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.
- More autocomplete predictions: With autocomplete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.
- Fresher and more complete blog search results: We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.
- Original content: We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.
- Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League: This change displays the latest scores & schedules from these leagues along with quick access to game recaps and box scores.
- Image result freshness: We made a change to how we determine image freshness for news queries. This will help us find the freshest images more often.
- Layout on tablets: We made some minor color and layout changes to improve usability on tablet devices.
- Top result selection code rewrite: This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.
Google also points to the recently launched Verbatim tool, the updated search app for the iPad and the new Google bar a other recent changes to be aware of regarding Google search.
Posted under Google, SEO | No Comments
Google+ Is Slowly Invading Google’s Main Search Results
Matt McGee
Google+ content is slowly — but very surely — expanding its footprint inside of Google.com’s main search results. The latest integration comes via the rel=author tag that Google’s been supporting since the summer.
Mike Blumenthal tipped us to this latest change, which may (or may not) still be in testing.
Here’s how it works for me, which — as I’ll explain below — is slightly different from what Mike B. is seeing.
When a search result with rel=author appears in Google’s search results, the author’s avatar and the adjacent byline both now link to a new Google search results page that begins with the author’s Google+ profile. (As best I can recall, those used to just link directly to the Google+ profile page.) Below the Google + profile information is “More results,” all of which come from the author.
The Google+ profile integration is even more substantial if you’re searching directly on the author’s name. In this case, Google shows a couple recent Google+ posts in addition to the profile information.
Maybe what’s most interesting about this is that, once you click the author’s avatar or byline, it acts as a search filter that continues on future searches. After doing the above, if I change my search term to “seo,” I continue to see only results that I’ve authored and the Google+ profile box remains at the top of the search results. In fact, in the example that Mike Blumenthal shows on his blog, my name appears up in the search box as a filter with an “X” to remove the filter.
I’m not seeing that same “X” filter in any browser that I try. Your mileage may vary.
(Added: This “persistence” appears to be session-based. If I close my Google search tab and then search again in a new tab, the filter no longer remains in place.)
Google has been slowly and quietly inserting Google+ into its main search results recently. We recently wrote about a potential Google+ and Google Places integration that some are seeing, as well as Google+ content appearing as site links on some queries. It seems safe to say that we’ll continue to see more of this in the future.
Posted under Google, SEO, Web Development | No Comments
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