The Knowledge Panel Course: Getting a Knowledge Panel in Three Easy Steps
Script from the lesson The Knowledge Panel Course
Getting a Knowledge Panel in Three Easy Steps
Jason Barnard speaking: Hi and welcome. There are three very simple steps to getting a Knowledge Panel. And the same three steps also apply to correcting, enhancing, and stabilising the presence of a Knowledge Panel. So, keep watching even if you already have a Knowledge Panel.
Jason Barnard speaking: Number one, provide Google with your version of the facts. Number two, ensure that version of the facts is corroborated on multiple trusted, authoritative sources. Number three, signpost supporting evidence so that Google trusts your version.
Jason Barnard speaking: Simple.
Jason Barnard speaking: A word of warning though, be patient. Google is quite slow at understanding and even slower at being confident in that understanding. When it shows a Knowledge Panel on the right hand side on a desktop search, it’s showing what it considers to be facts, and it doesn’t want to get them wrong. So, it will always be very, very, very cautious.
Jason Barnard speaking: The first and by far the most important trick is absolutely always your Entity Home. Ironically, Google is looking for your version of the facts about you from you. And surprisingly, a large part of this course is how to ensure that it recognises you as an authority about yourself. It sounds strange, but believe me, it works.
Jason Barnard speaking: Google wants to hear from you: who you are, what you do, and which audience you serve. When you get this right, you set the foundational understanding in Google’s brain. You get to decide how it understands you, your offers, and your relationship with your audience. Google knows which website is yours, but you need to convince it to trust the information you provide.
Jason Barnard speaking: The second trick is to find out which first, second, and third party sources Google trusts for information about you. First party sites are those that you own and fully control. Second party sites are those that you partially control the content but do
not own the website, for example: Twitter, LinkedIn, review sites like Trustpilot, or an industry site where you have a profile page.
Jason Barnard speaking: Third party sites are those where you have no control, for example: articles and videos about you by bloggers and journalists. If you can figure out which of each type of site is relevant for the entity, then you know where to correct information that already exists and add additional corroborative information that will help Google understand and build up its confidence.
Jason Barnard speaking: The third trick is to signpost. You need to link from your web page to the trusted and authoritative corroboration sources, and signpost Google back from them to your Entity Home.
Jason Barnard speaking: Explained this way, this is all incredibly simple, and it is. This is absolutely not rocket science. It is definitely something any marketer or brand manager can do. You can stop this course now and apply the strategies I have already outlined and get into Google’s Knowledge Graph and get a Knowledge Panel.
Jason Barnard speaking: So, why should you continue with this course? Because, as with everything that is worth doing, it is worth doing well. And also, as with everything that seems very simple, there are hundreds of caveats, exceptions, and pitfalls that could trip you up. One thing I have learned since 2012, when I started working on Google’s understanding of the world through its Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Panels, is that when you get things wrong, recovery takes years rather than weeks or months.
Jason Barnard speaking: If you are thinking that Wikipedia, Wikidata, EverybodyWiki, or Wikitia are the solution, then think again. I have tried them all and learned some hard and difficult lessons. Each can trigger a Knowledge Panel short term, but none is necessary, none is necessarily helpful, and each can present you with problems further down the line, as you’ll see in this course.
Jason Barnard speaking: Other sites such as IMDb, MusicBrainz, LinkedIn, D&B, and Crunchbase provide massive opportunities that are incredibly powerful when you use them appropriately. And that is incredibly important. Knowledge Panels are majoritarily filled with information that is not from the Wikis. Google uses the entire web to populate your Knowledge Panel. And your industry and geo region play a huge role in terms of sources that Google uses for the information it displays in Knowledge Panels.
Jason Barnard speaking: When there is a Wikipedia page, information from there will tend to dominate. So effectively, control of the contents of your Knowledge Panel is mostly with Wikipedia editors and not you. Also remember that to get a Wikipedia article or a Wikidata page, you need to be notable. And since they both aim to be helpful to humans, that makes sense.
Jason Barnard speaking: For its Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Panels, Google simply doesn’t care about notability. Everybody is welcome. So, you don’t need to be notable, but you do need to be visible and you do need that visibility to be clear and unambiguous. Getting and managing a Knowledge Panel is 100% about you being clear and unambiguous on every platform you can, starting with your own website.
Jason Barnard speaking: So, once again, that three step process: number one, provide Google with your version of the facts on your Entity Home. I’ll explain more about the Entity Home and how to clearly present your version of the facts in the next lessons. Number two, ensure that that version of the facts is corroborated on multiple relevant, trusted, authoritative sources. This is the topic of the following lesson dedicated to the best strategies for corroboration.
Jason Barnard speaking: Number three, signpost supporting evidence so that Google trusts you. You can do this using simple links, which I explained in a dedicated lesson on joining the dots for non-geeks, and you can also use Schema Markup, which is the subject of a dedicated lesson too. And although it might seem very geeky, I would suggest that you look into Schema Markup even if code scares you. We have a simple-to-use free tools on Kalicube Pro that will generate the Schema Markup for you.
Jason Barnard speaking: To summarise, starting with your own website, you have to be clear about who you are, what you offer, and which audience you serve with your content, products, and services. Then you need to ensure that a clear message is repeated on every single
first, second, and third party website that talks about you. And that is the trick to getting into Google’s Knowledge Graph and triggering a Knowledge Panel on Google for a search query on your brand name or your personal name.
Jason Barnard speaking: Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you soon.
