As it is dubbed, the “Knowledge Graph” in Google Search has been populated with more than 500 million knowledge objects, with more than 3.5 billion facts about the relationships between those objects, seamlessly combining a Bing-like “snapshot” panel with results that appear closer to Wolfram Alpha’s own knowledge engine.
The Knowledge Graph fairly “knows about” a miscellaneous things, people, and places, such as landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings and movies.
In a posting on the Google Official Blog, Senior Vice President of Engineering Amit Singhal noted that, instead of mainly focusing on matching keywords to queries, this latest enhancement enables the search engine to use an intelligent model that “understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”
Most importantly, the search engine company said that, now, when a user searches for an “object” in its database–such as the “Taj Mahal,” “Mona Lisa,” or “Leonardo da Vinci,” Google’s search results will try to identify the proper context for the search, identify key facts about it, and then lead onto related topics for further discovery.
In fact the company further noted in the following words, “We have always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and respond you back exactly what you want, Singhal, wrote in a blog post. “And we can now sometimes help answer your next question before you have asked it, because the facts we show are informed by what other people have searched for.”
As an example, a search for “Marie Curie” on Google’s Knowledge Engine will display when and where Curie was born and died, as well as her spouse, children, and famous discoveries. But, the same search conducted on on Wolfram Alpha, shows her name, date and place of birth and her death, then drops down to talk about her discoveries. Incidentally, Google identifies her place of death only as “Sancellemoz,” the name of a sanatorium in Passy, Rhone-Alpes, France; Wolfram uses the location instead.
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Another example conducted of a search for the term “Kings,” which could be a professional basketball team, hockey team or TV series, said Ben Gomes, who holds the title of Google Fellow.
Adopting this new feature, Google will be able to figure out which “Kings” users mean by giving them some options, and then presenting them with a box on the right of search results with related photos and other data.
“There is only so far that words themselves can take us,” Gomes said. “What we need to do is create a map of all the things in the real world, and the relationships between them.”
Explaining further, Singhal mentioned that the new Knowledge Graph is a step toward what it called the next generation of search, which taps into the “collective intelligence of the Web,” he said.
In fact, that is what Microsoft attempted with its Bing redesign last week, which added a “snapshot” panel with additional facts about an object. (Microsoft representatives said that feature is still rolling out, even on the Bing redesign, though the changes are accessible via bing.com/new.) A “sidebar” also feeds in results from the collective intelligence of a user’s friends, connected via social media sites like Facebook and others.
Finally, the new look for Google’s search results will roll out over the next few weeks to U.S. English users, Google said. Google also mentioned that the Knowledge Graph will roll out to Android 2.2+ phones and tablets, as well as Apple iPhones running iOS 4 and above, using either swipable results to the left and right or an interactive ribbon to provide the additional context.
Needless to say that the move could invigorate other Google initiatives, such as its Wallet mobile payment service. For instance, Gomes noted that a search on a phone for a particular musician could return information including the date and time of their next concert.
Representatives from Google were not immediately available for comment.
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