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Google’s Knowledge Graph May Show For 25% Of All Search Queries

Google's Knowledge Graph shows for about 25% of all Google queries, which can pose a threat to the publishers who are the source of much of that data.

Barry Schwartz on January 16, 2015 at 9:07 am

Steven Levy has a really in-depth story on Google’s organic search trends over the years. He was able to interview the key players and decision makers on the Google search team and one of the nuggets of information he shared was that he believes that about 25% of all searches done on Google show a knowledge graph related answer or box.

Steven Levy put this in brackets and added a disclaimer that Google wouldn’t say, but there is no way he pulled the 25% number out of a hat. He probably overheard it or got this information off the record.

He wrote:

Google won’t say officially what percentage of queries evoke a Knowledge Graph answer but appears comfortable with a ballpark estimate of about 25 percent.

In his story, Steven talked a lot about the knowledge graph. He even mentioned how important the acquisition of MetaWeb, the company behind Freebase is to the knowledge graph. But he did not mention the recent news that Freebase is closing up shop, transitioning the data to Wikidata, leaving it out of the hands of Google.

The 25% figure is also important because often the knowledge graph answers and boxes leave the searcher not needing to go to the publishers site to get the answer. Instead, they just get the answer from Google – who often sources the information from a publisher – leaving the publisher with no way to monetize that. If 25% of the queries show information from the knowledge graph, it makes you wonder if that leads to ~25% less traffic for publishers?

This all goes back to the concerns publishers have with the knowledge graph and how and when they cite their sources. All of which, Steven Levy doesn’t address in his story also.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.