Gianluca Fiorelli asked on Twitter why does Google sometimes show the source of their answers in the knowledge graph or quick answers and then sometimes does not?
I asked Google this question and I got a response, which I posted at Search Engine Land this morning.
The response:
When it's basic factual information you can find many places (e.g., when Obama was born), we just present it as is. When it's not widely-known information, or when we show relevant snippets from webpages, we typically do show the source (though we may not in some cases where we're working directly with the source).
(1) Example of basic factual information without a source link:
(2) Example of not widely-known information with a source link:
(3) Example of not widely-known information without a source link:
Of course, many SEOs are not happy with the swiss army knife answer from Google's Amit Singhal and they may not be happy when they hear this.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
