Google Knowledge Graph facts for kids

The Google Knowledge Graph is like a huge digital brain that Google uses to give you quick answers. When you search for something, it often shows a special box next to the regular search results. This box, called an infobox, gives you important facts right away. It's like getting an instant answer without clicking through many links.
This information is put together automatically from many different sources. It covers all sorts of things, like famous people, places, and businesses.
When it first started, the Knowledge Graph grew very fast! In just seven months, it had three times more information. By 2016, Google said it held 70 billion facts. It helped answer about one-third of the 100 billion searches people did each month. By March 2023, it had grown to 800 billion facts about 8 billion different things.
Google doesn't share all the details about how the Knowledge Graph works. But they do say it gets its information from many places. Some of these sources include the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia. The Knowledge Graph also helps answer questions you ask with your voice, like when you use Google Assistant or Google Home.
Some people have pointed out that the Knowledge Graph doesn't always say where its information comes from. It also doesn't always show citations, which are like footnotes that prove where facts came from.
Contents
A Look Back: How it Started
Google first announced the Knowledge Graph on May 16, 2012. They wanted it to make Google searches much more helpful. At first, it was only available in English. But by December 2012, it was added for other languages too. These included Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian. Bengali was added in March 2017.
Part of the Knowledge Graph used information from a database called Freebase.
In 2014, a science magazine reported that Google was working on something called Knowledge Vault. Google later explained that Knowledge Vault was just a research project, not a live service. It was about finding new ways to understand information from text.
Google's Knowledge Vault was designed to collect facts automatically from all over the internet. It would then combine this information into a big knowledge base. This base could answer direct questions, like "Where was Madonna born?" In 2014, reports said the Vault had gathered over 1.6 billion facts. About 271 million of these were considered "confident facts," meaning they were thought to be more than 90% true. The Knowledge Vault was different from the Knowledge Graph because it gathered information automatically. It didn't rely on people to collect facts.
Thinking Critically: What Others Say
Wikipedia and Traffic
Some people worried that the Knowledge Graph might cause fewer people to visit Wikipedia. This was because the Knowledge Graph often showed answers directly, and some of that information came from Wikipedia.
In 2014, a news site noted that Wikipedia still had no real competition for its content. They also said that for a non-profit like Wikipedia, traffic numbers don't mean money in the same way they do for other websites. After this, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, said they "welcomed" the Knowledge Graph. They also said they were "looking into" any traffic drops. They added that they hadn't seen a big drop in people coming from search engines. They also talked regularly with Google staff working on the Knowledge Graph.
In a 2020 book, an author pointed out that many Google users don't realize that answers in the Knowledge Graph come from Wikipedia. This might make Wikipedia less popular. In turn, it could make it harder for Wikipedia to get new money and attract new volunteers.
Fairness and Accuracy
The Knowledge Graph has also been criticized for sometimes showing information that is unfair or not completely correct. This can happen if it gets information from websites that are very good at getting noticed by search engines.
For example, in 2014, people noticed that there was a Knowledge Graph for most major religious figures like Moses and Muhammad. But there wasn't one for Jesus, who is central to Christianity.
On June 3, 2021, a knowledge box wrongly said that Kannada was the "ugliest language in India." This caused a lot of anger from people who speak Kannada. The state of Karnataka, where most Kannada speakers live, even threatened to sue Google. Google quickly changed the information and said sorry.
See also
In Spanish: Google Knowledge Graph para niños
- DBpedia
- Google Assistant
- Linked data
- Knowledge graph
- Semantic integration
- Semantic network
- Wikidata