Subject areaData and infrastructure
Also known asknowledge graph
The Knowledge Graph is the database Google uses to describe the world as a set of entities (people, companies, places, works, concepts) joined by relations: a person founded a company, the company is based in a city, the city is in a country.
Google introduced it in 2012, and since then search engines have reasoned more and more about things and less and less about strings of text.
Its most visible output is the panel that appears beside the results when someone searches for a name. The site's articles put it this way: structured data «can contribute to Knowledge Graph panels and enhance brand visibility». The graph belongs to Google, so nobody writes it directly and no markup inserts it into a page: it is fed by sources that agree with each other, namely schema.org structured data on your own site, Wikidata, Wikipedia and official profiles.
More broadly, the term names any database organised as nodes and relations, and AI platforms too use structured data to «build knowledge graphs» of their own.
An example
An industrial paint manufacturer describes its name, headquarters, founder and official profiles on its website with structured data, and makes them match its Wikidata entry: Google links the sources to the same entity and, when people search for the brand, shows the panel with the correct information.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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