In fact, Google has told us in the past month they have received 1,246,713 removal requests from 24,129 different target domains of 1,296 copyright owners by 1,087 reporting organizations. So only just over a thousand copyright owners submitted removal requests and top five include Microsoft with over a half a million URL removal requests last month followed by British Recorded Music Industry, NBC Universal, Elegant Angel and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Here is a chart showing the increase in removal requests by week:

Google said they respond to these requests incredibly quickly, often in less than 11 hours.

Google lists all these details on this transparency report site, showing that the top five targeted domains include filestube.com, torrentz.eu, 4shared.com, zippyshare.com and kat.ph. In fact, Google lists each take down request for anyone to see and updates the numbers and reports daily.

Overall the data goes back to July 2011.

Google has not informed us the number of false claims being issued but said they do offer a way to counter notice on these take down requests. Google did say they do comply with 97% of the take down requests.

For more details, check out the copyright removal request section of the Google Transparency Report.

Most important among the 50+ changes announced from our multinational / global point of view, is Google’s new handling of generic search queries which previously would not have been localised.

Where in the past a search such as ‘seo’ or ‘jacket’ would have simply returned Google’s non-local result set, now Google will include results specific to your location (whether you have actively set your location or not: Google will locate you based on your IP address).

Google SERP showing localised results for a generic search term post Google Venice.

Obviously, the impacts of this change are far reaching.

Where previously in a multinational SEO or PPC campaign you would plan your Keyphrase Strategy around performance on localised sets of mid to long tail keyphrase terms and largely discount targeting performance for very generic (i.e. single word) terms for all but the largest websites or brands, now you will very likely start receiving traffic for very top level terms when you’re considered to be a localised listing to the searcher’s location.

This means that if you do operate in multiple territories, it’s now absolutely essential to be considered a local listing.

For a walkthrough guide on how to ensure localisation across all your target markets, follow my guides in previous Search Engine Land articles.

In effect, by thoroughly localising pages across your target markets, you are now able to be returned for the very highest traffic terms with minimal effort.

Such terms have the benefit of a very high percentage of new visit visitors associated with them (your SEO ‘net’ is cast further, capturing more visits from people who have never been to your website before).

This reflects the message you should be sending out to the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) of top line information about your company USP or brand message, and your fulfilment of that message on the associated landing page.

I’ve also written about this before in these hallowed pages, so I won’t go over old ground again.

But for example, if you are a high-street retailer and your point of difference is a guarantee of authentic third-party brand products with a rock-solid retail warranty, then getting those elements front and centre of your SERP snippet, and following through on that promise on the landing page is now vital.

Supplementing that message via PPC for successful top level organic search visit terms identified through your eCommerce data is also highly recommended. Partly because of the proven overall improvement in SERP conversion for such strategies, but also because going through this analysis process will highlight the new generic terms driving traffic to your site as a result of Google’s Venice update.

By matching your strategy to Google’s algorithmic triggering of localised results for generic search terms you will naturally be targeting some of the most valuable, least competitive (relatively!) SERPs that SEOs have ever seen to date.

They won’t stay uncompetitive for long, that’s a guarantee!

In making the changes to this prime real estate on a search results page, Google is lessening somewhat the visibility of Google+. But it’s still using the space in the upper right of its search results to keep searchers on Google — something well within its rights, but something that may attract criticism in the same way that the Google+ box did.

Let’s look at what’s going on now….

Background: People and Pages On Google+

When Google launched “Search Plus Your World” in January, it made content from Google+ much more visible in the search results.

Part of the Google+ push was a content box called “People and Pages on Google+” that would appear adjacent to the top organic results. It didn’t matter if you were logged in to a Google account, or used Google+ — there was the “People and Pages on Google+” content box in the top right of the search results page. It showed primarily for generic search terms like “music,” “cars” or “Facebook.”

Search results like that — especially the one for “Facebook,” which has been the most popular search term in the U.S. for the past three years — brought on a lot of criticism because Google was promoting Google+ ahead of what were often more relevant social profiles. In the third example, Google was leading searchers to Mark Zuckerberg’s inactive Google+ page rather than to his Facebook profile. Danny Sullivan covered that and several other relevance issues in his article, Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy.

Now: People and Pages on Google+ Is Gone

Now that the dust is settling on last week’s Google Knowledge Graph launch, we’re no longer able to see the “People and Pages on Google+” content box on any searches. It’s gone, replaced instead by different Knowledge Graph-related content boxes.

That search (from above) for “music” now shows a Knowledge Graph box for “People related to music.”

A search for “cars,” which used to include links to the Google+ pages of brands like Toyota, Nissan, Ferrari and others, now shows a Knowledge Graph box that invites searchers to “See results about” the Pixar movie Cars.

Other searches that previously showed the “People and Pages on Google+” content box, like “Facebook” and “seo,” don’t show anything from the Knowledge Graph. Search Engine Land’s editors did a number of searches yesterday and none displayed the old Google+ “People and Pages” content box.

Google: We’re Blending Content

A Google spokesperson explained that Google is blending different content sources, including Knowledge Graph connections and Google+ profiles, to return the most relevant content on the search results page.

And it’s true that searchers are seeing content from different sources; a search for Google CEO Larry Page, for example, shows this in action. The photo is from (and links to) his Google+ profile, and further down the Knowledge Graph box is a clipped version of his most recent post there.

There’s also text from (and a link to) his Wikipedia page, along with several links related to the Knowledge Graph data. And, even though those links don’t promote Google+ like the old “People and Pages on Google+” did, they do keep people on Google and may lead to some of the same criticisms that Google faced before.

Possible Knowledge Graph Criticisms

To be clear: It’s Google’s search engine and I’m a big believer that they can link to their own properties if they want. But, as with the Search Plus Your World examples from January, if they do so in a way that’s not relevant and/or not user-friendly, they leave themselves open to vocal critics. (And if they do it in a way that appears anti-competitive, those critics may include the U.S. government.)

A search for “seattle mariners” offers an example of what I’m talking about:

In this case, like many others, the Knowledge Box is showing a mix of content — text from Wikipedia, latest post from Google+, and other information. The possible issues are:

• the Mariners’ logo and the light text below it send searchers to the Mariners Google+ page, not to the Mariners’ official site, which would seem to be the most authoritative, relevant and user-friendly link for that spot in the Knowledge Graph box (and the fact that the team logo says “Mariners.com” is likely to mean users will think a click there leads to the official site)
• the links on “Eric Wedge,” “Safeco Field” and the others are links to conduct more Google searches; will users expect to get links to search results there? or will they expect to be linked to the official Safeco Field page? or, since Wedge doesn’t have an official site, will they expect to be linked to his Wikipedia page or his bio on the Mariners website?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. But I do know that, when a Knowledge Graph box about the Seattle Mariners doesn’t contain a single link to Mariners.com, and has several internal Google links instead, critics have an opportunity to continue accusing Google of promoting itself at the expense of relevancy.

The Knowledge Graph box has its pros and cons. The data is, in many cases (but not all) excellent — it’s very cool to be able to scroll through the Mariners’ roster right from inside the Knowledge Graph box, for example. But the fact that all of the links keep searchers on Google, either sending them to Google+ or creating another search, probably won’t quiet the criticism about Google promoting itself too heavily in search results.

Bottom line: The “People and Pages on Google+” content box brought Google a fair amount of flak, but what’s replacing it isn’t necessarily going to change that.

The new version is version 2.0 and was completely redesigned focusing on speed, usability, new features and making it beautiful.

Here are the main new changes you will find in version 2.0:

• Complete App Redesign
• Full Screen Mode Option
• Faster Search Autocompletion
• Faster Page & Swipe Load Times
• Image Search Redesigned Adding Full Screen, High Resolution Images & Save Image Feature
• Swipe Away Web Pages To Return To Results
• Search Within Web Pages
• Faster Switching Between Images, Places, News, Web & Other Verticals
• Quicker Access To Google Apps

I am a bit surprised Google is making it that easy to save images from Google Image search to your camera roll, with the issues of copyright and Google Images – but they are.

Here is a screen shot of the new image search results page:

For more details, see the Google Blog.

Related Stories:

• Google Mobile iPhone App Gets Overhaul, Becomes Google Search App
• Google iPhone Search App Gets Doodles
• Google Tests New Colorful iPhone Search Design
• Official: Google Instant Now Available On iPhone & Android
• Google Custom Search Mobile For iPhone, Android & Palm Pre
• Google Brings Voice Search To The iPhone

Near the end of the talk, someone asked if how much money Google will make is factored into decisions about changes to Google’s (unpaid search) algorithms. Singhal was adamant: “no revenue measurement is included in our evaluation of a rankings change.” Listening to him explain how excites he gets about search improvements and how changes are evaluated, you realize there’s no spin here. He’s absolutely telling the truth. And he would know. Chris Sherman asked if anyone at Google really understands how the whole thing works and he replied that while no one knows how everything works (all of unpaid search, AdWords, Android, etc.), he has a pretty good idea of how all of unpaid search works. Not many can make that claim.

Core to Singhal’s talk was a focus on what Google does look at when improving unpaid search algorithms. The key is always relevance.

Singhal talked about the evolution of Google’s unpaid search algorithms. In 2003, they worked on stemming and synonyms. This meant that those searching for [watch buffy the vampire slayer] [watching buffy the vampire slayer] and [view buffy the vampire slayer] would likely all see the same results. In 2007, came universal search, which was a big step forward in understanding searcher intent. (Searchers typing in [i have a dream] not only are looking for Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech,  but would like to see a video of it.)

Understanding Intent

Ten years ago, search results were keyword-based, but Google is now moving towards understanding the intent behind the words. Singhal talked about Google’s acquisition of the company FreeBase, which has done substantial work on understanding phrases as entities rather than strings. “Mount Everest” isn’t just two words, it’s also a mountain, with a height, in a location, and so on. (Shortly after the talk, Google launched their Knowledge Graph, which is the next step in this understanding.) Combine intent with speech recognition and mobile devices and you almost end up with what Singhal first glimpsed years ago on Star Trek. We do indeed, live in the future (almost).

Personalization

In 2012 took a big step (whether or not that step was forward is up for debate) towards greater personalization with Search Plus Your World, which began incorporating Google+ into search results for those logged in. Singhal explained that Google+ integration was not the point, it was just a proof of concept. The point was a foundation for a wider world of (more secure) searching over everything: both what’s public in the world and what’s private to each searcher. Perhaps one day Google will in fact be able to find your car keys.

Singhal said that searcher click behavior shows that searchers are happy with this integration. But he acknowledged there’s work to be done. When asked when it would launch in Europe, he said that based on feedback, it’s undergoing improvements first.

Relevance and Data: How Changes Are Evaluated

Search Plus Your World is built and evaluated the way all ranking algorithm changes are: build, evaluate, launch, learn, improve, repeat. Relevance is key to every measurement. Singhal stepped through the process:

1. An engineer at Google has an idea of a signal (one of over 200) that might be introduced or tweaked to improve overall relevance.
2. That algorithm change is run on a test set of data and if all looks good, human raters look at before and after results for a wide set of queries (a kind of manual A/B test). The human raters don’t know which is the before and which is the after. The raters report what percentage of queries got better (more relevant) and what percentage got worse (less relevant).
3. This process gets looped several times as the algorithm is tweaked to better serve results for the queries in the “worse” set.
4. Once the overall manual ratings show that the algorithm tweak makes results better overall, it’s all tested again. This time, a data center (one of many that contains Google’s index and serves results to searchers) is loaded with the new algorithm and a very small slice of searchers (typically 1%) see the modified result set. Are those searchers happier than the ones seeing the version of results without the tweak? Singhal says they compare where searchers click. Clicks on higher ranked pages mean results at the top are likely more relevant, and searchers are happier. (He didn’t say so, but they may look at other data, such as click and back behavior.)
5. An independent analyst compiles the results and provides a statistical analysis, which is presented at a search quality meeting, where engineers look at the data and debate the change. If they decide this tweak improves the quality of search results overall (and is good for the web and doesn’t overly tax internal systems), the change goes out.

This process is happening all of the time with lots of different proposed tweaks and tests. 525 algorithm changes were launched in 2011. That may seem like a lot, but earlier this year Singhal noted that many more changes were tested.

“Concurrently we have approximately 100 ideas floating around that people are testing – we test thousands in a year. Last year we ran around 20,000 experiments. Clearly they don’t all make it out there but we run the process very scientifically.”

Aggregated data from millions of searchers typing millions of queries provides clear patterns. Singhal said that not only do those who get better results more quickly click higher in the search results, but they also search more. (We’ve heard this before from Google. Marissa Mayer, for instance has noted that a half a second delay in rendering search results resulted in 20% fewer searches).

Singhal noted that the kind of personalization platform envisioned with Search Plus Your World is harder to test. Human evaluation looks at relevance, but personal relevance is unique for each searcher. All Google really has to go on is click behavior. Singhal talked with Danny Sullivan about this dilemma a few weeks after Search Plus Your World launched:

“Every time a real user is getting those results, they really are delighted. Given how personal this product is, you can only judge it based on personal experiences or by aggregate numbers you can observe through click-through.”

All of this gets complicated by varied screen size. The user interface becomes more important as increased use of mobile devices and tablets shrink screen real estate.

If these changes are all about increased relevance, why is only Google+ represented in Search Plus Your World? Why not Facebook and Twitter? Singhal explained that most personally useful Facebook data is locked behind a login, and Twitter produces content at a rate that is too massive for Google to crawl quickly and comprehensively. Or, they could, but it would probably take down the Twitter servers. Twitter has also had some technical issues that have made crawling difficult, although are being fixed.

What About Panda and Penguin?

Singhal said that Google’s algorithms aren’t perfect (hence the 20,000 experiments a year). He looks at bad queries every day (and encouraged the audience to let him know about them! So, add them to comments to this post and we’ll forward them along). But when asked specifically about Panda and Penguin, two of the latest high profile algorithm changes, he said that data has shown they significantly improved the number of high quality sites being returned in results. They are not only refining what signals they use in ranking, but are improving how they gather and tune the signals themselves (so signal quality is higher). They are  constantly looking for aberrations in signals.

At the end of the day, he said, site owners need to take a hard look at what value their sites are providing. What is the additional value the visitor gets from that site beyond just a skeleton answer? Ultimately, it’s those sites that provide that something extra that Google wants to showcase on the first page of search results.

Knowledge Graph? “Graph” is a technical term used to describe how a set of objects are connected. Google has used a “link graph” to model how pages link to each other, in order to help determine which are popular and relevant for particular searches. Facebook has used a “social graph” understand how people are connected. “Knowledge Graph” is Google’s term for how it is building relationships between different people, places and things and report facts about these entities.

Big Change, Subtle Appearance

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the coming change. At the time, I felt what was described seemed more an extension of things Google had already been doing rather than a dramatic shift. Now having seen it first-hand, I stand corrected. The WSJ had it right. This is indeed a big change in line with other major launches like Search Plus Your World last January and Universal Search in 2007.

Big change, but I don’t think it’ll be a shocking change to most Google users who will begin seeing it over the coming days on Google.com, if they’re searching in US English.

Google will still look largely the same as it does now. Knowledge Graph information flows into new units — they have no official name (and I did ask), so I’ll call them “knowledge panels.” These panels appear to the right of Google’s regular results, rather than disrupt those familiar links:

Knowledge panels don’t always appear, only showing up only when Google deems them relevant. But when Google does think they’re relevant, they’re a pretty cool search exploration tool. When the head of Google Search, Amit Singhal, let me play with the new system following his keynote talk at our SMX London show yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of it like a form of StumbleUpon or channel surfing for search.

Fact Surfing

A search for Star Trek brought up a panel that included a reference to Star Trek: Voyager, my favorite of all the series. Jumping to explore that, the Voyager box included a reference to Babylon 5, another favorite sci-fi show of mine. Jumping to that box, there was a reference to Claudia Christian, who wonderfully played one of the main characters in Babylon 5, Susan Ivanova. I surfed over for a look.

If you’ve ever started reading a Wikipedia page and then gotten lost jumping from one topic to another, that’s the experience I think many are about to discover with Google. You’ll not only discover answers to factual questions, but you’ll likely quickly explore more than you had planned and have fun doing it.

3.5 Billion Facts About 500 Million Objects

Google says it has compiled over 3.5 billion facts, which include information about and relationships between 500 million objects or “entities,” as it sometimes calls them. In general, entities are persons, places and things. You know, nouns.

In particular, these are just some of the categories of objects Google has facts about:

• Actors, Directors, Movies
• Art Works & Museums
• Cities & Countries
• Islands, Lakes, Lighthouses
• Music Albums & Music Groups
• Planets & Spacecraft
• Roller Coasters & Skyscrapers
• Sports Teams

Again, those are just some of the categories. The relationships are also as important as the facts. The relationships allow the Knowledge Graph to know which actors to list for a particular movie or which spacecraft have visited  a planet.

The Most Popular Facts

How do you keep from getting overwhelmed with useless facts? Google picks out the facts for each object that are most sought in relation to that object.

“We are showing all the things that people look for in a given query,” Singhal told me.

Consider these two knowledge panels, one for Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, the other for architect Frank Lloyd Wright (you can click to enlarge):

For both, you’re told when they were born and where they were educated. After that, the remaining facts shown differ.

Only Groening has facts about his parents and siblings listed. Why? Look closely at the names: Margaret (Marge), Homer, Lisa. Groening named characters after his own family. Looking at searches related to Groening, Google can tell these are commonly sought answers.

For Groening, the books he’s authored are listed. For Wright, his famous buildings are. That makes sense. People are far more interested in structures by Wright than by books by him. Indeed, Google’s autocomplete suggestions — which are based on the most popular terms related to a core search topic — reflect this:

I found it fascinating to see what was shown, as I ran through various classes of searches. For Disneyland, popular rides were shown. For a ride like Space Mountain, the duration was shown (really, only 3 minutes?). For an astronaut, I was shown the missions and overall time they’d spent in space (how cool to have that as a fact about yourself). For Buckingham Palace, the size of floor space was listed. For Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, their estimated net worth was shown.

Each knowledge panel has a “People also search for” area at the bottom which lists related people, places or things. Again, the relationships are determined by looking at search data. People who search for Groening, for example, often search for David X. Cohen, who co-created Futurama with Groening.

For search marketers, or anyone interested in how people search, these panels have become another great discovery resource along with keyword research tools like Google Trends, Google Insights, Google Correlate or the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Facts But Not Actions

One thing I found lacking was that the knowledge panels I saw often lacked links to let people take actions related to these objects. For example, one of the popular things people want in relation to Buckingham Palace is to book tickets for tours. However, the panel had no options for this.

In contrast, the new “Snapshots” announced (but still about a week from going live) as part of Bing’s relaunch last week are heavy on trying to help people do things like book tickets or reservations.

Why not have actions?

“We will, of course, explore that, but right now, we just want to take it out and see how it works,” Singhal said.

Occasionally you can take actions via the links to some of the source providers of facts, as with some music searches that might credit Songkick or StubHub.

Which Andromeda Did You Mean?

For some searches, there may be more than one entity that Google has facts for related to a search. In these cases, rather than make the wrong guess, Google will put up a “See results box” as shown below for Andromeda:

Andromeda could mean, in Google’s Knowledge Graph, the galaxy, the TV show or the Swedish band. This box, also known as a disambiguation box, allows people to make the right choice.

Where Do The Facts Come From?

How does Google know any of these facts? Google Squared was an initial attempt in 2009 to extract facts from the web. Google still has that technology, but the service was never that impressive on accuracy and closed as standalone site last year.

Rather, it was Google’s purchase of Metaweb in 2010 that really jump-started the Knowledge Graph. Metaweb was building both the relationships and, though Freebase, a database of facts.

Since that time, Singhal said Google’s massively grown the fact database. Contributions happen with Freebase, but data also comes from publicly-available sources like Wikipedia and The CIA World Factbook and even information out of Google Books. Beyond that, Google also licenses data from others.

“Wherever we can get our hands on structured data, we add it,” Singhal said.

Fixing Bad Data

Drawing from Wikipedia and other public sources means that there’s no guarantee that the facts are accurate. That’s why the knowledge panels on Google all have a “Report a problem” link at the bottom.

If you click on that, you can then indicate if any particular fact is incorrect. Singhal said that Google will use a combination of computer algorithms and human review to decide if a particular fact should be corrected

If Google makes a change, the source provider is told. This mean, in particular, Wikipedia will be informed of any errors. It doesn’t have to change anything, but apparently the service is looking forward to the feedback.

“They really are excited about it. They get to get feedback from a much bigger group of people,” Singhal said.

Will Publisher Traffic Drop?

Search engines have increasingly moved toward showing direct answers in their results over the years. Such efforts have worried some publishers, leaving them wondering if they’ll be left out of receiving search traffic. After all, if search engines provide answers right within their results, why would anyone click away?

Google’s Knowledge Graph is going to massively increase the number of direct answers shown, which will almost certainly renew concerns.

Singhal’s response is that publishers shouldn’t worry. He said that most of these types of queries, Google has found, don’t take traffic away from most sites. Part of this seems to be that the boxes encourage more searching, which in turn still eventually takes people to external sites.

Still, some are going to lose out, he admits. But he sees that as something that was going to happen inevitably, anyway, using a “2+2″ metaphor. If people are searching for 2+2, why shouldn’t Google give a direct answer to that versus sending searchers to a site? By the way, Google does do math like this already and has for years.

Below, you can hear Singhal talk more about this when asked by a member of the audience at SMX London yesterday:

Click here to view the embedded video.

My concern is what happens if publishers have compiled great information that someone at Wikipedia or Freebase harvests into a database. For example, if a Disneyland fan site has organized a list of ride durations by doing original legwork, what credit do they get if that data is used? Facts can’t be trademarked, at least in the US, so anyone can help themselves assuming they don’t duplicate the exact format or presentation.

Google does list credit links to places like Wikipedia. In turn, Wikipedia does give credit (albeit in a way that doesn’t help search rankings) to the sources it draws from. But that puts actual source material two clicks away from the searcher, assuming the searcher wants to go beyond the fact they already received.

This is one that has to be watched closely. As I wrote before, it seems likely the Knowledge Graph will impact a relatively small set of sites that focus on facts, sites that already likely exposing answers in their listing descriptions and so not getting traffic anyway. But we’ll see.

It’s also important to remember that the “main” results aren’t disappearing. Consider again the Frank Lloyd Wright search, this time with the knowledge panel in context with the regular results:

As you can see, links to sites outside of Google remain to the left and in the most viewed area of a search results page.

Being Included

What if you want to be part of the new knowledge panels and Knowledge Graph in general? Singhal said that at the moment, there’s no mechanism designed for sites to do this. IE, if you run a site about Frank Lloyd Wright, there’s no way to be associated as some type of suggested source for the Frank Lloyd Wright panel.

Potentially, you could head over Freebase, open an account and contribute. Of course, I’m pretty sure adding your blog to a horrible list of blogs like this isn’t going to help. Maybe other categories might be more successful, but I’d hold off, for the moment.

Tagging parts of your pages with commonly used schema might be helpful, though I wouldn’t do this solely in hopes of getting your facts into the Knowledge Graph. The articles below have more about using schema:

• Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data
• Google Takes First Big Bite Into Rich Snippet Search With Recipes
• A New Google Rich Snippet For Real Estate, Other Business Listings
• Google Adds Rich Snippets For Application Reviews: iTunes Apps, Android & More
• Google Adds Rich Snippet Support For Music
• How Retailers Can Improve Product Visibility Using Structured Markup
• Concert Rich Snippets: List Your Ticket Sale Site Under Band Web Sites
• MicroData & Retail Products: Not Ready For Primetime?
• How To Use Rich Snippets, Structured Markup For High Powered SEO

Ads, Mobile & Tablet Formats

Anyone familiar with Google’s ads will immediately wonder what happens when the panel shows.

Singhal said that if there are also ads along with a knowledge panel for any search, the ads will still display. Google also has different formats for when a query has a few, many or no ads. I haven’t seen these, but I’ll try to update as they become visible after the launch.

In addition, Google also uses special formats to make the panels work well on tablet and mobile devices, he said. They aren’t restricted to just desktop search, so that’s good news for those of you who want an easier time to cheat at pub and bar quiz nights.

Sadly, there’s no way to just search the Knowledge Graph directly. It only appears with regular Google Search.

The Competition

Google’s not alone in having a knowledge graph, of course. Wolfram Alpha, launched in 2009, has continued to refine its service. It got a big boost being picked as a search partner by Apple to help power Siri (even though that recently embarrassed Apple on a particular search about smart phones).

As for Bing, it has a partnership with Wolfram Alpha plus owns Powerset technology that, somewhat similar to the Knowledge Graph, tries to deeply understand the meanings of words, rather than just really match patterns of letters.

But Bing hasn’t really seemed to capitalize on either its Wolfram partnership nor Powerset. Really, the Knowledge Graph seems to be going more head-to-head with Wolfram Alpha. Does it?

“Wolfram is far more computational,” Singhal said, explaining that Wolfram Alpha’s goal seems to be finding ways that you can effectively use facts in computations.

For example, you can enter cars in california / california population into Wolfram Alpha to have it take those two facts and come up with an average (about 1 car for every two people, by the way, using 2009 data).

Google’s not trying to perform these types of calculations. The focus is instead on providing popular facts.

The Future

The big picture, of course, is that some day the Knowledge Graph won’t just be used for facts. Instead, if Google can better tag actual web pages to entities, then it can better understand what those pages are about and related to, which might increase the relevancy of its regular results.

That’s down the line, as are many other changes to the knowledge panel themselves. Today represents only a start.

“This is just a baby step, in my view, to expose this to our users,” Singhal said.

To learn more about the Google Knowledge Graph, see coverage from others across the web organized here on Techmeme, the official Google blog post, plus the official video, below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Articles

• Google 2.0: Google Universal Search
• Powerset Launches “Understanding Engine” For Wikipedia Content
• Wolfram Alpha Live Review: The Un-Google
• Up Close With Google Squared & Some Wolfram Alpha Thoughts
• Google Buys Metaweb To Bolster Answers, Google Squared & Rich Snippets
• How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work
• WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time!
• Google Testing “Sources” Area With Info About Movies, Books, People, Music & More
• Bing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar

I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began running larger tests on 500+ web directories and noticed as much as 16% or more are no longer showing up in Google. Based on his initial numbers, there are over a 100 web directories that are not indexed by Google.

I do not know if these directories were ever listed in Google or removed recently due to one of the recent Google updates; i.e. Penguin, Panda refresh, blog link network elimination and unnatural link warnings.

I did ask Google for a comment on this specific case and Google declined.

Have you noticed a recent massive delisting of web directories from Google’s index?

Chris Sherman is on stage to introduce Amit Singhal, Google’s Vice President and Google Fellow. Chris provides Amit’s background showing a dynamic visualization using Google Maps with the countries/cities that Amit has lived on. Amit got a M.Sc. degree in University of Minnesota. He worked for AT&T (Bell Labs), and from where he headed to Google.

Amit thanks for the intro and talks about his child memories and how he grew up watching Star Trek. He dreamed about creating robots that we can talk to. As an academic for many years he worked hard on language software that he believed would help him with his dream. In 2000 he went to Google and said to Sergey: “Your engine is excellent, but let me re-write it!” This became the new ranking system.

Amit then talks about how he got involved with the challenge of moving beyond keywords to tackle the problem of having the same words that have multiple meanings: how can you understand user intent? Apple (software) vs. Apple (fruit) was the first generation of search. The next leap in search technology will be when computers will understand the difference between those Apples. That’s what excites him.

In the last 5 years Amit feels he is very close to building his childhood dream. Even though there are many things to be done before achieving this dream, he feels Google is in the right direction and they will be able to achieve that. “Computers don’t understand things, they understand strings” and it is Google’s jobs to teach computers how to differentiate between different intentions.

Danny is speaking about Universal Search and how it evolved Google to Search Plus Your World. How is Search Plus Your World impacting Google? Amit says the key motivation behind Search Plus Your World is to have a secured search, it is the first baby step to achieve Google’s dream, and data shows that Google users like the personal results. It also gives the user one click removal from their personalized results. Google is currently analyzing and improving their personalization engine.

Chris mentions that personalization can be narrowing, as it gives people the same results and they do not discover new things. Amit answers that there should be different points of views in any search results, and Google is aware of that and they balance between personalized and non-personalized results.

Danny mentions a Pew research that concluded that people do not want personalization. Amit says “I am a scientist, when I look at researches I look at how the question was asked.” He discussed the specific research, and said that personalization is valuable for Google users. Danny asks: can you tell what percentage of personalized searches are clicked? Amit says people are clicking more than before on searches and it is lifting CTR from search pages.

Chris mentions Bing Social efforts and how it is different from Google’s. Amit says: “the key challenge with personalization is that no one can judge a personalized search for someone else.” That’s why Google looks at the data about how users like their results. Search Plus Your World is the same approach as Universal Search, people have to find what they intend to find on their results.

Danny mentions the integration Bing did with Twitter and Facebook, and how this might be good for users. Will Google do that in the future? Amit said that their contract with Twitter expired. Google cannot add Twitter and Facebook right now as their information is hidden behind a wall. It has been tough to build an integration in this terms.

Chris asks Amit how is the evolution process at Google with so many updates; how does Google decide about which update goes live? Google has an internal system where every flawed search result is sent to Amit’s team. Based on that engineers are assigned to problems and solutions are tested on a sandbox. Then the engineer will show how the results will show after and before the update and the update is tested using an A/B test. They discuss the results and this loop runs several times until they find a change that is better in all aspects. After this process the change is send to a production environment for a very low percentage of real user traffic and see how the CTR is changed. Based on this, an independent analyst (that works for Google) will generate a report. Based on that report the group discuss and decides if the change is going to be launched or not. That’s how scientific the process is. There are some videos available on some of these sessions: check them at this post.

Danny talks about Penguin and asks how it is going from Google standpoint, are search results better? Amit says that in the end of the day, users will stay with the search engine that provides the most relevant results. Google’s objective was to reward high quality sites and that was a success with Penguin. One of the beauties of running a search engine is that the search engines that can measure best what the users feel is the one that will succeed more.

From Google’s perspective they use any signal that is available for them, more than 200 of them. They have to make sure they are accurate and good. They will use any signal, whether it is organic or not. Chris discusses the link graphs and how it is common sense now, but what about the knowledge graph? Google wants to return to users the answers that they are looking for, and that’s what drives them. Google is increasingly investing in understanding the real meaning of each query so that they can return the right answer.

Danny asks about Paid inclusion in vertical products, which was against Google’s policy in the past. Amit says that a class of searches could not be answered organically and they realized that they would have to establish relationships with data providers to get that data. To be super safe and honest with users, they make sure that these results look different, and they also started calling it sponsors to be even more clear about that.

Chris asks about the dream of creating a communicating machine and asks how this will change the way we relate with Google. Amit says that these changes come in baby steps, and it won’t be an overnight change. Amit gives the example of spoken search, and how this data is still scarce, and Google will adapt according to data.

Amit was asked whether search results are measured by Google’s revenue or by relevancy to users. Amit firmly states that revenue is not measured at all, only relevance is taking into account when defining search quality.

Amit says that if you build a great search engine for users, they get more curious because they expect to get great results, so they ask more questions. Giving relevant results will give more time for people to search more and free them time.

Postscript: Here’s video of his response, which came to a question about how publishers might potentially lose traffic if Google provides more direct answers:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chris asks: with the scope that Google have reached, is there anyone that still knows all of Google? Amit says that there are senior executives that each can understand very well their own “entities” such as Search, Advertising, and other big groups, but no one understands everything.

Danny asks which funny search Amit has came across. Amit says that once he read a query along the lines “do my ear make me look fat?” Amit laughs: “why are you asking Google that? Go figure it alone!”

Amit concludes that he couldn’t have a better job, he gets to influence search quality and also to improve the world in some ways.

According to our source, comScore will report that both Google and Bing have made small, incremental gains since last month and seen modest growth since last year. One or both are growing, it appears, at Yahoo’s expense. AOL and Ask are basically flat.

Yahoo is at its lowest point to date and has recorded its eighth straight monthly decline in terms of market share. Our source believes that Yahoo’s share could sink quite a bit lower over time.

Here’s the comScore share breakdown for the past two months compared with a year ago:

Data source: comScore (5/12)

These data do not include mobile search query volumes. We know that many publishers are seeing a range of between 15 percent and 25 percent of their queries now coming from mobile devices. In some categories the percentages are much higher: restaurants for example where 40 percent or even 50 percent of traffic is now from mobile.

Google is far and away the dominant provider of browser-based mobile search query volume in the US.

Postscript: Now the official comScore numbers are out and they’re consistent with what we posted above.

Experiment Confirmed

I noticed these appearing yesterday in my own search results, and Google has confirmed that there’s an experiment happening:

We’re always experimenting with ways to improve search, but we have nothing to announce at this time.

Google does indeed often experiment with new formats, randomly tagging some visitors to see the formats being tested. I apparently was one of those tagged. Most people, however, won’t see some of the examples I’ll share below, as they’re not tagged into the experiment.

I think that will change in the near future, because as I’ll explain at the end, this is one test that I suspect will go fully live soon.

TV Shows

Here’s what I see in a search for Lost:

You can see off to the right-hand side there’s a little summary about the TV show “Lost” that’s drawn from Wikipedia. Cast members are listed, along with a “People also search for” area showing other TV shows that seem related to Lost.

In the previous test last November, this box was called “Sources.” That label is now gone. I’m continuing to call it the “Sources” box for want of a better name.

Actors

Clicking on the links generates a new Google search along with further information. Here’s a close-up of what’s shown for Evangeline Lilly:

Movies

Similar units appear for movies, such as this for in a search for Avengers:

Music & Bands

Musical groups like U2 appear:

People

There’s also extended information about some people, apparently if they are listed in Wikipedia. For example, a search for “dooce” brings up extended information about blogger Heather Armstrong, who is known by that name:

Books

Even books can get a special display:

With Or Without Google+

None of the units are dependent on Google+, nor are they part of Search Plus Your World. They appear whether you’re signed in or not, whether you use Google+ or not. But if you are part of Google+, the units might get additional information.

For example, signed-out, I see this for a search on the TV show New Girl:

Signed-in, since I follow the New Girl page on Google+, information from that appears in a “From your circles” area above the sources box:

New Format For Direct Answers Live For Everyone?

Google is also showing direct answers that come from different sources. Bas van den Beld from State Of Search also appears to be in the test and noted that for a search on “hot fuzz director,” he got a direct answer like this:

This is similar to what you see at Bing for the same search, where the information is disclosed as coming from Freebase, a service that Google owns:

However, these direct answers don’t seem part of the sources experiment. For example, using my Chrome browser in “incognito” mode, which keeps me out of the Google sources test, I can still make these boxes appear, such as this for “avengers cast:”

Is This The “Search Refresh” The WSJ Wrote About?

Direct answers like these have long been part of Google. The formats, however, seem new. The addition of the sources box also suggests that what the Wall Street Journal wrote about earlier this year, about Google offering more direct and semantic answers, is about to happen.

In WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time!, I took the WSJ article to task because I thought it overhyped what was likely to happen, which was Google expanding things that it already does.

That still seems to be the case. This will no doubt be a big change to hit Google. But it will also be one of those “evolutionary not revolutionary” type of changes.

If you see these boxes, then you’re one of the few who have also been tagged as part of the experiment. If you don’t, then there’s not much you can do but wait. It seems likely they’ll eventually come for everyone.

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• Google Squared Powers Answer Sources & Something Different Refinements
• Google Goes Beyond Answers, Starts Guessing Release Dates
• Google Buys Metaweb To Bolster Answers, Google Squared & Rich Snippets
• Confirmed: Google Testing New “Sources” Display In Search Results
• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”
• Two Weeks In, Google Says “Search Plus Your World” Going Well, Critics Should Give It Time
• WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time!