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Google’s Knowledge Graphs are Actually Called Knowledge Panels

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knowledge panel headerGoogle’s Gary Illyes is continuing to teach webmasters about what some of the “official names” are for various parts of the Google search results, rather than the name we all use for it.  This time we learned that what we all commonly call knowledge graphs are called knowledge panels by Google.

After I tweeted about this story, Gary Illyes made the comment that they are actually called knowledge panels…. and a quick Google search shows that while a few sometimes call them knowledge panels, most overwhelmingly call them knowledge graphs.

Now, as Illyes notes, it isn’t completely out of left field why we call them knowledge graphs.  But it is actually the data and infrastructure behind the panels that is known as the actual knowledge graph.  What we see in the search results is the end result of the knowledge graph back end, called the knowledge panel.

As an industry, we have a habit of calling things by a logical (and sometimes not-so-logical) name if we don’t have an “official” name.  We recently learned that what we have been calling “answer boxes” are actually called featured snippets internally at Google.  Of course, we all know about the naming of the mobile friendly algo, which was dubbed Mobilegeddon after the name “mobile friendly algo” wasn’t considered interesting enough.  However, Google also changes official names, such as we saw with the recent name change from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console.So we should get used to calling them knowledge panels and not knowledge graphs, since the graph part refers to the infrastructure feeding it the data, and the knowledge panel is the part we actually see in the search results.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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