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Google used to only answer simple questions like "who's the prime minister of Canada?" or "what's the population of China?". Thanks to the Knowledge Graph project, Google can answer more complicated questions like "who played Batman?", "what's the latest album of Celine Dion?", "what are the main attractions in Spain?".

Now Google shows direct answers for even more complex questions, but this seems to be limited to the US. Here's an example of question that doesn't have a definitive answer: "what's the distance between Earth and Mars?". I picked a shorter version of the query: "distance to the Mars." Google shows a snippet from a page that answers the question and highlights the distances. Usually, the page is in the first 10 search results and Google shows an extended snippet.


Here's another question: "why is the sky blue?".


Why is the Red Sea called this way? Google has the answer.


Google also answers: "how many work days in a year?", "who owns Lancia?", "who ended world war 2?", "who celebrates presidents day?", "how many countries are there?".


The answers aren't always accurate and sometimes they're incomplete (Will Smith has 3 kids):



While Google's quick answers are often useful, it's a good idea to check if they're accurate.

Google has an experiment that hides the Knowledge Graph sidebar, so it no longer shows information about famous people, companies, plants, cars, movies, books and more.


To try this experiment, install a cookie manager extension like "Edit This Cookie" for Chrome or Cookies Manager+ for Firefox, go to google.com and change the value of the NID cookie to:

67=Pj2b01uyf7hJnPvNoPECEnzlbCoXch_13GxuSVeSSyRdm_irfKzVaizXIE5svj3Qw1985iU4waenQh_Qy-BrE4WOtZ5Zoz9T4Kl1e1DtwJL4Xy0-JBcW_Z9IOKdd1H5Z


If you use "Edit This Cookie", don't forget to click "Submit changes". Delete the NID cookie to opt-out from the experiment.


{ Thanks, Rubén. }

Google has a lot of clever algorithms that detect so many things automatically. Some of these algorithms extract facts from webpages and add them to the Knowledge Graph.

Here's a baffling example which shows that Google's algorithms aren't always so smart. When you search for [Robert Greene], Google shows some information about an American author who was born in 1959 and died in... 1592. Google confused Robert Greene, the American author, with Robert Greene, a 16th-century English writer. The American author is alive and still writes books.


The good news is that you can tell Google when you found an error like this by clicking "Feedback/More info" and then "Wrong?" next to the information that's incorrect. Still, you'd expect Google to check if the date of death is more recent than the date of birth.


Update (November 28): It took a few days, but Google fixed this issue.

Related:
Google and Brandy: a sober mistake
What's the right answer?

{ Thanks, Roie Ambulo. }

Google's Knowledge Graph cards for searches like [zombie], [mummy], [skeleton], [witch], [vampire] or [ghost] include some Easter Eggs. For ghosts, Google informs users that the food source is "air, your fear, being remembered", you can avoid them by "burning sage; not building a pool on burial grounds; staying away from haunted places" and you can defeat them by "calling Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz" from Ghostbusters.


You can avoid skeletons by "staying away from catacombs and science classrooms" and skeletons have the following subgrouping "dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones".


To avoid zombies, "don't join a dance troupe led by a man in a red leather suit; stay out of graveyards".


Mummies use "the power of love (and curses)". Google's advice: "don't raid tombs; never read ancient scrolls" if you want to avoid them.


Vampires have only one food source: "your blood". To avoid them, "don't invite them in, keep garlic on stock, stay away from Transylvania".


Witches are easy to avoid: "don't eat red apples from strangers; hide if you see a flock of flying monkeys".


{ via Search Engine Land }

If you search Google for a chemical compound like carbon dioxide, sulfuric acid, glucose, ethylene glycol, ethyl acetate, you'll notice that the Knowledge Graph box includes an image with the "3D" icon. Click the first thumbnail and you'll get an animated 3D model of the compound.


Google uses the player from the Google Shopping 360° Product Images feature. Here's a direct link to the player.


This is a much more complex compound:


{ Thanks, James Sacuan. }

When you search for a TV show from the US, Google's Knowledge Graph card now shows the latest episodes. "For example, say that you're wondering when the next season of The Walking Dead starts. Try searching for [the walking dead tv show] and you'll see all episodes listed along with their air dates," explains Google.

I've searched for [Breaking Bad], [Seinfeld], [Dexter], [Modern Family] and the results are pretty good. Unfortunately, when you click on the episode title, Google displays a card that doesn't provide a lot of useful information. It's just the first paragraph from the corresponding Wikipedia article. Here's an example: "'Problem Dog' is the seventh episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Breaking Bad, and the 40th overall episode of the series. It originally aired on AMC in the United States on August 28, 2011." Google should use the plot summaries from IMDb.

After adding support for reminders about the latest releases from your favorite music artists and actors, Google Now lets you subscribe to updates when you search for notable people. Just click "Keep me updated" in the Knowledge Graph card from Google's search results page and you'll get the latest news articles about that person in Google Now.


Google Now also shows cards for "breaking news and other developing stories you may be interested in", based on your web history.

It's not clear if the new updates feature will replace the reminders feature. Right now, a search for [U2] shows "Remind you about new releases", while a search for [Madonna] shows "Get updates about Madonna".

"Keeping up with the latest information about your favorite musicians, movie stars and other notable people just got easier thanks to the Knowledge Graph and Google Now," informs Google. "Say that you're a Lady Gaga fan and like staying informed about her latest album releases. On the Google Search App, search for [lady gaga]. On the card that pops up, tap 'Remind you about new releases?' and Google Now will keep you updated on your phone or tablet. Similarly, use Google Now to stay in the know about your favorite athletes. For example, search for [colin kaepernick] and tap 'Get updates about Colin Kaepernick' on his card; doing so lets Google Now know that you'd like to receive news. Remember that to use this feature, you'll need to be signed into your Google account on the Google Search App."

Well, I don't see 'Remind you about new releases?' when searching for [Lady Gaga].

When you search Google for [brandy] or [brandy drinks], you'll get a Knowledge Graph card with information from Wikipedia: "Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink." Unfortunately, the photo that illustrates the card is not appropriate: it shows the popular singer Brandy, not the alcoholic beverage.


The photo is from an article about drinks and the caption says: "If this is the first brandy you think of, you need to get out more". Well, this shows that Google's algorithms are far from perfect.

{ Thanks, Sébastien Izouaouen, Sushubh Mittal and Max Kemman. }

Remember the post about Google's new music video results? They're used by a Knowledge Graph carousel that shows a long list of songs when you search for things like [Moby songs], [Michael Jackson music], [Nina Simone list of songs], [Beatles track list].


Click one of the songs and you'll see the search results for that song's name. The top result is a music video from YouTube, which has a huge thumbnail. The video doesn't play inline, the thumbnail only links to a regular YouTube page.


You'll see the same interface if you search for a music artist and click one of the songs from the Knowledge Graph sidebar. You can also append "albums" to the query, click one of the albums and you'll see a list of all the songs from the album. Search for [Moby Wait for me songs] and you'll find a list of the songs from Moby's Wait for Me album.



It would be nice to play songs from the Google search results page. Even a short Google Play preview would be pretty useful. If that's not possible, then Google could embed YouTube's player, so you can watch music videos without opening a new page. Another improvement would be to automatically generate a YouTube playlist from all the music videos listed in the carousel, like YouTube does.

{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

Google's Knowledge Graph feature gets smarter every day. You've probably noticed the carousel that's displayed when you search for things like [dog breeds], [asian rivers], [swedish bands], [science fiction books], [surrealist painters]. For some queries, you'll now see a drop-down that lets you select other similar categories. If you search for [surrealist painters], you'll see a long list of genres: abstract, cubist, impressionist, rococo, romantic.


Until now, Knowledge Graph displayed information about a single entity. Now you can compare 2 things. For example, you can search for [orange vs tangerine] and find out that oranges contain two times more vitamin C than tangerines.




"You can try this for some other things you might be curious about, such as dog breeds (compare pekingese vs. chihuahua) or celestial objects (compare earth vs. neptune) — and we'll keep adding more," informs Google.

It looks like Google brings back some features from an old Labs project called Google Squared and makes them more usable.

{ via Inside Search }

If you search Google for music artists, actors, books, TV shows and you're logged in, you'll see a new "Remind me" button in the Knowledge Graph card. Click the button and "Google Now will remind you about new releases/movies/episodes on your phone or tablet".


Until now, you could add time-based and location-based reminders to Google Now. These new reminders are special and can only be added from Google search. You can manage them from the Google Search app on your mobile device: just go to Settings, My Stuff and select Reminders.


This feature was added last week, when the Google Search app for Android was updated.

Sometimes the same question can have multiple answers, even when you're looking for a simple fact. I've searched for [ny population] using Google and Bing and got two completely different answers. Google's answer is 8.245 million, while Bing's answer is 19,501,616.


It's obvious that Google replaced "ny" with "New York City", while Bing replaced it with "New York State". If you're searching for [new york], Google will show information about the city, while Bing's data refers to the state.


To disambiguate your query, you need to search for [ny city population] or [ny state population] and both search engines will return similar answers.

What if you search for [ronaldo age]? Here's what you get: 28 years (Google) and 36 years (Bing). Google mentions that the answer is for Cristiano Ronaldo, but Bing doesn't.


Both answers are OK because there are two football players known as Ronaldo: Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima (born 18 September 1976, retired Brazilian player) and Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (born 5 February 1985, Portuguese football player - Real Madrid). Most of the top search results from both Bing and Google are about Cristiano Ronaldo.

To make things more confusing, Bing also provides information about Cristiano Ronaldo:


More examples:






To sum up, it's a good idea to disambiguate your query and to check the answers provided by search engines.

Back in March, I posted about a page that lists the research topics that are displayed by Google Now, but the page stopped working after a few days. Now it works again, has more features and it's no longer limited to Android devices.

Just go to www.google.com/now/topics/ and you'll see a long list of topics related to your recent searches. They're based on your search history and should only show up if you performed multiple related searches about a topic.


Click one of the topics and you'll get a list of search results that are supposed to be helpful. You'll see reviews, forum threads, news articles, videos, web pages and other related topics.


It's interesting to notice that Google uses the Knowledge Graph to generate related people, music, movies, hotels and more. There are publicly available topics pages like this one.


The results aren't always great, as you can see here:


{ Thanks, Anthony Raffini. }

Google bombing has a new meaning, with the introduction of the Knowledge Graph. From [more evil than Satan himself] to [miserable failure], Google bombs were created by getting many web pages to link to the target homepage and use the same anchor text. For example, Microsoft haters linked to Microsoft's homepage and used this anchor text back in 1999: [more evil than Satan himself]. After a few months, Google's top result for [more evil than Satan himself] was Microsoft's homepage. Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button made Google bombs more popular, many people thinking that Google modified search results pages.

Here's a screenshot from 1999, well preserved by bedope.com:


... and the well-known political message "miserable failure" (screenshot from 2007):


Google started to use some algorithms to defuse bombs in 2007, but there are still ways to artificially inflate Google rankings for a page to show your opinion. For example, when you search for [completely wrong], Google shows pictures of Mitt Romney, the Republican Nominee for the US Presidential Election in 2012.


Knowledge Graph brings a new meaning to Google bombs. If you search for [kłamca], you'll get a Knowledge Graph box for Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland. "Kłamca" is a Polish word that means "liar". In fact, many of the top results for [kłamca] are about Donald Tusk, who is no longer popular in Poland.



Apparently, this Google bomb has been reported back in 2010 by Polish news sites. Back then, the top search result for [kłamca] was the Wikipedia page for Donald Tusk. Now Google shows an entire sidebar with information about the Prime Minister of Poland.

This reminds me of a screenshot from 2009. This time it's from Bing:


As Search Engine Land noticed, when you search for [miserable failure] using Google right now, you get an info pane about Google bombs and some disambiguation links for George W. Bush and political Google bombs.


{ Thanks, Jerzy. }