By now almost everyone would be familiar with the idea (if not how
exactly it works) where searches for people, places, companies and
various concepts would occasionally result in a call-out section with
information drawn from the Google Knowledge graph appearing on the right
hand side of the results page - this call out section is what is
referred to as a Google Knowledge Panel.
Stephen Hawking entry appearing in the Google Knowledge Panel (drawn partly from Wikipedia)
It has always been
unclear what is included by Google in their Knowledge Graph , though we
are told they draw from sources like CIA Worldbook, Freebase, Wikipedia
and more recently Wikidata.
What sources cause a researcher to appear in the Knowledge Panel? Wikipedia, Google books & others
Given the importance of Google, getting included in the Google Knowledge
Graph and appearing in Google Knowledge panel is obviously a very
desirable thing. But how does this happen?
It's fair to say that it is well known having a Wikipedia page of your
own, would almost certainly guarantee you an appearance in Google
Knowledge Panel. (You can tell because those entries have a link to
Wikipedia in the description)
So most professors and researchers would appear if they had a Wikipedia
page. In my testing it seems even having a Wikipedia page that is
basically a stub is enough.
Of course, with
the notability standards in Wikipedia, it isn't easy to just create an entry in Wikipedia. But is there an easier way?
I've also seen entries appearing that seem related to authorship of books. Here's
Marshall Breeding. You can tell some of the data comes from Google books by the Google Books link.
Clicking on any book entry gets you a knowledge panel for the book.
Other Librarian examples to try are
Ned Potter.
I've also seen
entries that merge results from Google books and Wikipedia.
Wikipedia and Google books seem to be the most common sources I see Google draw from, though I have seen rarer examples such as
details drawn from Google Sites or even
institution profile pages.
Entries are also drawn from Google Scholar Profiles!
A couple of days ago, I saw a
tweet from Lisa Hinchliffe saying she has a Google Knowledge Panel. My reaction at the time was , well she is certainly famous enough to be worthy of inclusion and promptly forgot about it.
The next day, I was buying something via Amazon while logged-in to my
Google account and I googled myself to double check certain details in
my contacts (when you are logged-in to Google, it will show private
information only seen by you - drawing from gmail,google contacts etc).
I almost missed it,but then I saw my photo appear with my profile. To
confirm it wasn't due to me being logged-in I did it in incognito mode -
and it still was there!
Inverting the name and searching with Tay, Aaron works as well, but not with my legal name Tay Chee Hsien, Aaron.
Search with inverted name , surfaces a link to the Google Knowledge entry
Looking closely at the listed details like affiliation, Research
interests, publications listed below (in carousel display) and the
linked Google Scholar profile it was easy to see a lot of the data was
most likely drawn from my
Google Scholar profile. The link to the GS profile is of course another big hint.
My Google Scholar profile
This seems to be a fairly new thing, as
most of the researchers who I have seen in Google Knowledge panels
prior to this do not have a Google Scholar profile link, nor the list of
publications.
Lots of questions still remains
My first thought was Google is now feeding all entries from Google
Scholar profiles into Google Knowledge Graphs! But testing with various
accounts showed that while having a Google Scholar profile was a
necessary condition for such entries to appear, it wasn't a sufficient
condition.
As of now, I can't see any logic on why some people with Google Scholar
profiles are promoted and others are not. It probably isn't based on
H-index or total citations in Google Scholar profiles since there are so
many researcher profiles with high counts in Google Scholar that aren't
appearing in Google.
Another mystery was how did Google know what my Facebook and Twitter
accounts were? Given I have a fairly complete Google account, they have
gotten it from there, or has others have suggested it is because
I have Wikidata entry but
I doubt it since in Wikidata I use my full legal name. (Sidenote the
notability standards of Wikidata is lower than Wikipedia.)
Also playing around with other names, I noticed researchers who have
their H-index and citations (from Google Scholar profile) listed as well
as more social media profiles such as Linkedin, Youtube listed.
It's curious my own entry lacks a H-index and total citation despite it knowing my GS profile.
My guess is Google doesn't know I am a researcher because I don't have a
researcher tag (or any tag) below my name for unknown reasons and as
such it doesn't display my H-index.
Some examples I have seen tag the person as a
"professor" or
"author" and if it can merge the Google Scholar profile, the H-index is surfaced as well.
Indeed the most complete profiles I have seen, draw information from Wikipedia, Google books and Google Scholar profiles.
What things can you do once you are included?
Once your profile and characteristics of you are included in the Google Knowledge graph, quite nifty tricks can be performed.
Chief among them is to do Q&A type questions via Google assistant.
For example, below I tried asking Google Assistant what is the H-index
of Nader ale Ebrahim and it was able to correctly respond with 25,
because it was available in Google Knowledge Graph!
Or try Publication
Another example below where Google knowledge graph entries on Marshall breeding allows you to ask for books he wrote in 2010.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, at this point, there are more questions than answers, and
I do not know why some researchers who have Google Scholar profiles are
appearing, while others equally or more eminent are not. but I am going
ahead to claim my knowledge panel to see what else I can do.
Looking around it seems that music artists have also started been listed
in Google Knowledge Panels (linking to profiles from Youtube, Spotify
etc) and as always the same question is asked , how do I get listed?
Nobody really knows, except the general advice seems to be to get as
much content as possible out there on as many different platforms as
possible all with the same name.
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