Norton Scientific Collection: Google’s Knowledge Graph Debuts

Google has launched its new search tool, Knowledge Graph that will give direct answers in its results instead of simply providing links in an attempt to improve its core search business. Now, when you search for a popular place, person or thing, a floating panel on the right side of the results page will have a summarized answer for you, along with some related information.

The Knowledge Graph feature might just be the largest search launch in Google’s history. In fact, Google says that this feature has already surpassed the launch of Google News and Google Image in terms of information available on the first day — and it will obviously continue to grow as more collections and relations are being added. And for an online community that’s getting sick of all the hype on social search, Google’s renewed focus on improving the key search business is a refreshing change.

Google has been working on the Knowledge Graph for the past 2 years and have already made a database with 500 million entities and 3.5 billion defining connections and attributes like related searches. The Knowledge Graph draws information from a collection of information publicly available from sources like Freebase, Metaweb, Wikipedia, Google Books and World CIA Fact Book, among others.

Norton Scientific Collection reports that Google is not aiming to give false information with is Knowledge Graph but to actually draw relationships between objects in an attempt to figure what a user wants to know. For example, if searching for a prominent figure in history, the KG may include family details as well as his notable works and other contributions.

This is the fulfillment of Google’s previous promise to start employing “semantic” algorithms aiming to improved search through automatically connecting related ideas. Basically, its goal is to offer users contextualized answer and more helpful details while anticipating next queries. In short, Knowledge Graph is designed to make users find the exact answers even more quickly. Also in the right panel, there will be related links to help users discover other stuff that are connected to their search. It is like making a non-linear association to something that might come up in a conversation among friends.

This is a feature that has considerable long-term applications for online search and it is obviously still a work in progress for Google.

At present, the Knowledge Graph is only available for English-language searches and plans to launch it in other languages are still in the works. Possible updates may also include media like audio and video files as well as links for buying products directly.