Ever wonder why some knowledge panels show the authors books, while others might show movies or TV shows and maybe less or more information. Google sometimes determines what to show in a knowledge panel based on how people search for that person or entity.
Google's Danny Sullivan was quizzed about this by Chris Silver Smith on Twitter who wrote "One of the prime things of interest currently is how an artist's works are invoked to appear with them in Knowledge Panels. Some authors have approached me recently as their KPs became abruptly unstable entirely - either only appearing in Mobile or disappearing entirely. While that is explainable by us assuming that some weighting factor shifted as to whether to invoke KPs or not, the other question is of greater interest - why and how to invoke an artist's works in their KP at the bottom."
He shared these two examples:
Compare with the Knowledge Panel for Amanda Prantera, and you'll see that the books do not appear. Change the search to "Amanda Prantera books", and it's clear that Google does indeed identify her books. pic.twitter.com/Thdcp0YmIf
— Chris Silver Smith (@si1very) August 3, 2021
Danny explained that one of the reasons can be how people search for that person, if they use the word books in the query often enough. Danny said "the systems might see a lot of queries for King followed by books and determine it's useful to surface them in that case with the initial query. Or other types of factors like this might be involved."
The systems might see a lot of queries for King followed by books and determine it's useful to surface them in that case with the initial query. Or other types of factors like this might be involved.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2021
But this is completely automated with zero human intervention - I guess outside of folks being able to add elements like Cameos and claiming their knowledge panel.
I would reassure authors they're not being treated differently from other authors. The systems work *automatically* the same across all KPs to show what seems to be relevant to the types of searches. It's not specific to a particular author.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2021
I like to compare the cool Barry Schwartz to myself:
Ah Barry KP pic.twitter.com/R3XZYJEcKa
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 4, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
