knowledge panels business example

Knowledge Panels in Site Audits

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At this year’s Pubcon 2016, I presented how I had added Knowledge panels, Sitelinks, Featured Snippets, and information from the Google Search API into client’s Site Audits.

I had been doing this because Search Results at Google and Bing have started showing off information about businesses and sites that includes knowledge panel information and richer snippets. I thought it made sense to capture information that Google might be showing off that represented sites and business entities at those sites and provide some recommendations that might help improve how those looked at what kind of information they contained. The presentation is:

Knowledge panels may be enhanced because of a verified Google MyBusiness listing, a Wikipedia Entry, a Freebase Entry (now terminated by Google), and a Wikidata Entry. This Google Developers page provides more details:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/enhance-site

Adding Markup vocabulary on your site can result in knowledge panels showing links to social profiles for a business, as described here:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/social-profile-links

Knowledge panels based upon a Google MyBusiness listing can show off Reviews that people have submitted to Google+ for a site, “Reviews from the Web” from sources such as Facebook, Tripadvisor, Consumer Affairs, and others; and may also show off critical reviews. In addition, if there are enough reviews from Google+, knowledge panels may also show off sentiment-rich snippets from those reviews as well.

Search results are a lot more colorful and richer these days, and Knowing how to make your business and site stand out may bring you more traffic and customers as you are represented better in search results.

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42 thoughts on “Knowledge Panels in Site Audits”

  1. Query items are significantly more beautiful and wealthier nowadays, and Knowing how to make your business and site emerge may bring you more activity and clients as you are spoken to better in indexed lists.

    Its nice to see the SERP are really improving like reviews, and structured menus are already included. Nice share.

  2. Very interesting read Bill. Thank you for sharing the presentation. I’ve highlighted sitselinks and rich snippets in client reports before, but I’ve not gone to the depths that you’ve gone to.
    It’s given me more food for thought. That is for sure.
    Thanks again.

  4. Hi Jay,

    You’re welcome. I’ve been enjoying reviewing how sitelinks, and knowledge panels and structured data impacts sites. It is an area that Google has been making a lot of changes to recently as well. It’s nice keeping an eye on these changes and addressing them. 🙂

  6. Hi Andy,

    You’re welcome. Good to hear that you enjoyed the presentations. I should have given thanks to Carrie Hall who provided a lot of details on how local businesses get value from Knowledge panels, and who included some great tidbits of information about Schema.

  8. Hi Bill, interesting information. I just wanted to ask you whether it’s ok to add star rating snippets from a google my business page onto a page you would like to rank so that it looks eye catching in the SERPS? So basically the page will have schema code showing the stars which will link to the GMB page. I’ve seen some websites do this but just wanted to ask whether you think it’s sustainable in the long-term?

  9. As always Bill excellent analysis and great presentation showing the evolution through the years. Why do you think Google killed Freebase and do you believe there is a ratio for the knowledge panel to start displaying review snippets?

  10. Hello Suresh Here
    Thank you for posting this article i am enjoying to read it . Ya it’s sure sitelink, knowledge panels and structured data always impacts sites.

  11. Hi Bill!
    very informative post. I will use the suggestions discussing here for optimizing my new blog site.This post will be very helpful for the begaineer SEO worker who are new in this field.
    Keep posting this type of helpful post.
    With best wishes
    Abir Dutta

  12. Thanks for the always useful information. This is great information to help garage type SEO people like me.

  13. Hi Allen

    There aren’t any official places for people to learn about SEO, so if we have opportunities to help each other learn new things, we should take them.

  14. Hi Abir,

    Good hearing that you have learned some new things here for optimizing your site. I hope that others learn from it as well. I will keep trying to post helpful things.

  15. Hi Suresh,

    Search Results have changed in the past few years; and I tried to focus upon newer features that I hadn’t seen much about in Site Audits that people have been writing about or that I’ve been doing, and tried to carry these features over to my audits and my presentation.

  16. Hi Richard,

    Thank you. Freebase appears to have been replaced by a volunteer effort known as Wikidata. If you haven’t had a chance to see it or spend any time with it; it’s worth learning about. There does seem to be a required number of Google+ reviews before Google will start showing review snippets in a knowledge panel. It’s another of those things that have been changing over time. For a while, Google was showing 3 snippets in the knowledge panel for SEO by the Sea from 3 Reviews; and then they stopped. Then I got another review, and they started showing 3 snippets again. And then they stopped. I have seen one site with 7 reviews that shows 3 snippets. I’m not sure of the exact required threshold to start showing snippets, or if it will change, like it has for me in the past.

  17. Hi Alnoor,

    I don’t think Google wants people to add schema markup to their pages that show reviews or ratings that were submitted to a Google+ page. Google will show numbers of ratings and rating scores from Google+ in a knowledge panel for that site, so they have already found a way to display that information. Some other options that might be worth considering are available through this site started in part by Mike Blumenthal:

    https://www.getfivestars.com/

  18. Thanks for posting the slides Bill, it’s a great presentation, and something I need to learn more about.

  19. Wonderful blog! I truly love how it’s easy on my eyes as well as the info are well written. I am wondering how I may be notified whenever a new post has been made.

  20. Hi AsthiJivak,

    Thank you for your kind words. I do have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to, and that could provide notifications of new posts.

  22. I am very grateful for this enlightening article. I am new to this issue, but for me it elucidated several questions. Congratulations on your knowledge on the subject. Thank you very much.

  26. Hi Aymen,

    Thank you. I wanted to show people how I was including a look at entities and the knowledge graph in an audit. It has become a part of how I do audits now.

    I’ve seen a few people point me towards your website to show off knowledge graph results. I do like how it looks.

  27. Hello Mr. Bill

    I see you have comprehensively put a huge info in such a short blog. This must be beneficial for website optimization. I appreciate your work.

  29. your article gave some good point to seo beginners thanks for sharing your knowledge…

  30. I would agree the snipet panels or search query info boxes are killing it. They are huge and always at the top of the searches. It’s a huge advantage for your SEO campaign. Thanks Bill, great content.

  31. Hi Mark,

    Thanks. We’ve been seeing people increasingly refer to those answer boxes at the top of search results as being in “Position zero.” It is a nice place to be, especially in mobile results. If you can capture people’s attention, and persuade them to come visit your pages at the start of a search, it is a matter of being at the right place, at the right time.

  39. Its nice to see the SERP are really improving like reviews, and structured menus are already included. Nice share.

  40. Well, I am new to this Online business. And I have been researching about this stuff online to gain as much as the knowledge I can get.
    This was one of the finest information I came across.
    Cheers.

  42. Hi Filip,

    I do look at and report upon Sitelinks and knowledge panels in site audits to provide clients with a sense of what search results might say about them.

    A knowledge panel might contain information such as:

    Sentiment rich review snippets from Google+ reviews,
    Links to reviews on the Web from places such as Facebook and Yelp and other sources
    Critics reviews from critics that have registered to review things
    A busyness indicator that might tell people how busy a business is a different times during a day
    Links to social profiles for a business
    Buttons that might allow for things such as booking an appointment
    Google posts, which can be made through Google MyBusiness that can have buttons associated with them as well
    These knowledge panels can be personalized based upon the query; so if you search for the name of the business and a location, and they have a location or agent at the place, the knowledge panel might focus upon that location.

    A knowledge panel helps a searcher learn more about a particular business, and can create a positive impression upon searchers.

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