Author: Gus Pelogia
Website owners and SEOs usually optimize websites so that searchers can find them and convert, but the journey sometimes starts before users even reach your website.
The search results offer you (or your business) the opportunity to provide much of the information audiences are looking for about your brand, including a link to your domain, a description of what your business does, how to get in touch with your customer support, etc. This information is neatly presented in “knowledge panels”—a highly visible and valuable search result feature designed to provide an overview of a person, place, thing, or concept.
A knowledge panel for your brand can help instill trust with potential customers because it shows that search engines, like Google, understand who you are. However, if you want to earn this badge of honor (and search visibility), you’ll need to teach the search engines all about your brand and you’ll need to keep those details consistent and current.
Here’s what you can do to score a knowledge panel for your name/business, while naturally promoting yourself across the web.
Table of contents:
What are knowledge panels?
Knowledge panels are information boxes that search engines (like Google, Bing, etc.) will show when you search for an “entity”—a fancy term for people, places, things, and so on. I’ve put together a more detailed explanation of entities in the next section, but for now, this basic information covers what you need to know.
Search engines are more likely to show knowledge panels for well-known entities. Here’s what you can expect to see in a knowledge panel:
Individual (personal) knowledge panel | Brand/company knowledge panel |
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Introduced by Google back in 2012 (although now adopted almost universally by other search engines as well), knowledge panels do a lot more than display information about a person or brand. They’re a way to connect entities so that search engines can understand how these concepts are related to each other.
Google stores these entities and associations in its “Knowledge Graph,” which, in its own words, is a “database of billions of facts about people, places, and things.” This allows Google to make associations, such as who wrote specific books, the tallest building in the world, fastest animals, and so on.
As an example, here’s a knowledge graph I generated based on Spider-Man’s Wikipedia description (below).
You can see that, while the U.S. Army isn’t explicitly mentioned in the text, it appears in the knowledge graph because both Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (Spider-Man’s creators) were veterans. This is the power of knowledge graphs in surfacing relevant information, which you can see right on the search results page (SERP) in the form of knowledge panels.
Who is eligible for a knowledge panel?
You might expect that only popular entities deserve such a prestigious SERP feature, but I’m here to tell you otherwise: anyone—including you—can have a knowledge panel.
Take, for example, George Nguyen (above)—he is the editor-in-chief of the SEO Learning Hub (this website). He is not famous or particularly well known outside of his industry, yet he has a knowledge panel with a bio, an image, a link to an author page, and links to two of his social media accounts.
This is because, in order to create a knowledge panel, search engines like Google need to be certain about who or what the entity is (as opposed to how popular it is). After all, Google will only display a knowledge panel if people are searching for you/your brand and it’s in Google’s interest to give the best answer right away.
Google used to mostly trust a few sources such as Wikipedia, IMDB, Crunchbase, and the most well-known social media channels to extract information for knowledge graphs, but that has changed a lot in 2023. In the wild, I noticed a lot more websites have become sources, including the Wix SEO Learning Hub!
In some cases, Google changes the source of information from time to time and displays another source for a knowledge panel. This can also change based on location. As long as the information displayed is correct in both sources, there’s nothing to worry about.
Here’s an example based on location: my own search results in English include videos with me, while the same search done from Brazil highlights books I’ve written in Portuguese within my knowledge panel.
What is an entity?
“An entity is a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. For example, an entity may be a person, place, item, idea, abstract concept, concrete element, other suitable thing, or any combination thereof.” — Google Patents, “Question answering using entity references in unstructured data”
Search engines have evolved beyond simply matching keywords and can understand entities beyond single words or phrases. Anything can be an entity—e.g., a location, name, movie, food, color. In addition, these entities connect to each other regardless of language, as they are tied to concepts and not just keywords.
To give another example, here’s a search to find out Jerry Seinfeld’s age (above). Google shows me an answer straight away and connects it to many other entities related to Jerry Seinfeld, such as:
Parents
Spouse
Children
Alma mater
Movies and shows
Official social channels
Google has high confidence about all of his personal information and, to top it off, it shows me other people connected to him (personally and professionally) and their ages, as it believes it’s a probable follow-up search someone would do. As we learned recently, Google uses search behavior to improve results (so does Bing), so it may even change some of the results if users have changed their follow-up searches. (Note: User engagement is just one of many potential elements that search engines use to determine rankings.)
How does Google have confidence about all this information to display so much beyond my simple “age” question? Because all of these things (age, relatives, movies, colleges, etc.) are entities.
So, to get your knowledge panel, you need to become an entity as well.
Do you need a knowledge panel?
If you manage a local business, perhaps a Google Business Page (GBP) is enough for you. It really depends on what type of business you are in and who your audience is.
A GBP (left) is a straightforward profile that any local company can create. It exists only on Google properties, it’s managed directly by the business and can be optimized to appear in Google surfaces like Google Search and Maps.
Google Business Profile example | Google knowledge panel example |
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On the other hand, a traditional knowledge panel (right) is more complex and requires Google to understand and trust your entity a lot more.
Wix users can instantly verify their business and set up their Google Business Profile via their Wix account using their Business Registration Number (a process that might otherwise take up to seven days). Shortly after verification, your Google Business Profile should start showing for relevant searches (e.g., your business name, your services, etc).
For other companies, you might want to protect or promote a brand. Are there other businesses with the same name as you? Has your company merged with another and Google is still confused? These are some great reasons to pursue a knowledge panel for your brand.
How knowledge panels benefit your business
Some might be impressed by how cool it is to have your picture, profession, and associations displayed directly on Google, but there are many more advantages revolving around personal branding. Imagine:
An author being able to display all their books on Google’s shelf
A band displaying links to all their albums and streaming services
An interior designer displaying photos and videos from their YouTube channel and allowing you to see their style even before going to their website.
Now let’s look at the benefits for brands: Without even having to leave the search results, you can tell potential customers who you are, where your company is based, your customer service number, social channels, and more.
Beyond that, there’s an element of prestige and trust associated with knowledge panels. This can help establish credibility for your business, as knowledge panels are often seen as a form of endorsement by Google itself.
In addition to powering knowledge panels, Google also uses its knowledge graph as a source of information to create carousel and comparison features right on the SERPs, providing you with another incentive to build out your personal or business entity on Google.
Get started by building your “home” entity
You don’t need to be famous to have a recognized entity and a knowledge panel, but Google must have confidence you’re a distinguishable entity—not just a simple query from a random search user. As with many things in SEO, there are plenty of ways to build yours. Let’s start with the one that I believe is the easiest: building your home entity—a technique based on Jason Barnard’s method that I adapted according to my experiences. It’s called a “home” entity because it’s the one page that will aggregate all your base information and it’s fully under your control.
Let’s assume Google doesn’t know who you are yet, so you must have a page about you (or your business) to start. This can be a homepage on your personal website or your “About the Company” page. This page will naturally answer things like:
Name
Age
Location(s)
Awards won
Owner/founder
Contact information
What you do/sell
Social channels
Once you create this page, the next thing you need to do is add structured data markup to it. In short, structured data is a piece of code that “tags” each of these elements (name, age, location, etc.) on your pages into a format that’s readable by search engines. This not only provides search engines with information to populate knowledge panels, it also contextualizes your business for Google, allowing it to establish more entity relationships.
Wix has great resources explaining how to add and validate structured data. You can deep dive into them, but for now, you can start by using the templates below:
Structured data template for persons
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
"@id":"https://www.example.com/author-page#author",
"familyName": "Seinfeld",
"givenName": "Jerry",
"worksFor": "https://www.jerryseinfeld.com/",
"jobTitle": "Stand-up comedian",
"alumniOf": {
"@type": "EducationalOrganization",
"name": "Queens College, City University of New York",
"url": "https://www.qc.cuny.edu/"
},
"image": "https://www.jerryseinfeld.com/imageurlexample.jpg",
"sameAs": ["https://www.instagram.com/jerryseinfeld",
"https://twitter.com/JerrySeinfeld",
"https://www.facebook.com/JerrySeinfeld",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Seinfeld"]
}
</script>
Structured data template for companies
These templates contain the most basic information, but you can include a lot more information by adding other relevant elements, available on Schema.org for either Person or Company properties, depending on your needs.
While establishing your home entity and implementing structured data is a great place to start, it likely won’t result in a knowledge panel (if it was this easy, all brands could have one). You’ll need to continue demonstrating your authority and unifying your online presence to build out your entity, which I’ll discuss next.
Building E-E-A-T: The key to Google’s trust
So far, you have a starting point to explain to Google (and Bing), in search engine language, who you are. That’s just the beginning. Google is looking for external sources (out of your control) to gather more knowledge about entities like you (or your business).
Getting your brand mentioned in well-known sources, alongside more information about you, is key to increasing Google’s confidence about who you are/what you do so that it can generate a knowledge panel for your entity.
Existing businesses need to continue building their authority
Google will look for a lot more evidence that you are a real entity so that it can avoid mistaking one person or company for another, or providing incorrect information to searchers.
Validate your business information across existing sources
If you already have an online presence, the next step is to validate the information that is out there about your business. Start by Googling your brand name and save every website that talks about you. This includes:
Company profiles used in search (Google Business Profile, Yelp, TrustPilot, etc.)
Social media (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, X, etc.)
Other databases (IMDB, Crunchbase, Wikipedia, industry-specific databases, etc.)
Other websites with unstructured data (e.g., news articles and blog posts)
The next step is to audit what’s written about you and ensure essential information is up to date. Is your business still at the same address? Is the website and phone number listed? Do you categorize the business the same way?
In the case of your business profiles, most of them were likely created by you, so it’s easy to update incorrect information. Many others can be claimed in case you didn’t create them directly (as a matter of fact, you can claim your knowledge panel once it’s available—more on that later). News articles and blog posts are harder to get updated, so it makes sense to go after them last.
If you’re an expert in your field that writes for different websites, update all the about/bio pages to reflect your most up-to-date information. Maybe you changed jobs, got promoted, or received an industry award since you first began publishing on those sites. The plan here is to get the information available online about yourself or your brand accurate and consistent, so you can even use the same exact bio on all websites (don’t worry if they don’t match word for word, as long as the key information repeats, as shown in the example above).
Keep delivering consistent information about your business and offerings
Getting your name mentioned in well-known sources, alongside more information about you, is key to increasing Google’s trust. If you know a PR campaign will get industry coverage, aim to provide vast and accurate information about your company within it.
This naturally happens in a good campaign—I mean, if you don’t explain what you sell somehow, then you should review your press release before it goes live. However, there’s more that you can provide, such as your:
Offerings (products and services)
Logo
Location
Contact details
Founding year
Key accomplishments
Social media profiles
etc.
Take, for example, this press release about Wix’s AI meta tag generator:
The very first line of the press release tells you exactly what the entity (Wix) is. The end of the press release features an “About Wix.com Ltd.” section, which reiterates what Wix is, when it was founded, and what it offers.
Ultimately, the information you include here depends on your niche, but whatever you add, understand that consistency is the name of the game if you want it to help you earn a knowledge panel.
New businesses should be consistent from the start
If your business or professional website is new, it likely has little to no footprint online. Start researching places you’d like to be and profiles that make sense to create. For example, a SaaS businesses might start with G2, Product Hunt, and Trustpilot.
You’ll have to keep your profiles up to date, so don’t claim profiles you won’t manage properly or that aren’t relevant to your business, as they may be considered spam and might send dubious messages to Google if, let’s say, your address or other info is incorrect.
Do you see what we’re doing here? We’re feeding Google information about your entity. Remember to update your SameAs property within your structured data to link to these profiles, social media platforms, and databases. Also, add regular links to them on your content as well, you should do this for business reasons anyway.
For professional (portfolio) website owners, remember to:
Add your website on your Instagram bio
Link to X (formerly Twitter) from your LinkedIn
Include your job title on Crunchbase
Include your social channels in your website footer and structured data
Many of these websites have dedicated spaces for this information, so use it to your advantage.
How to check Google’s confidence in your entity
The easiest way to see if Google understands an entity is to check Google’s knowledge graph API. There are also tools, such as Kalicube’s Knowledge Graph Explorer and Carl Hendy’s Knowledge Graph Search, that give you an interface and ping the API, returning a confidence score.
This confidence/relevance score (at the very top of the example above) has no cap. The Beatles (band) has a score of 21,027, while their homonymous album’s score is 4,726. It makes sense that the artist comes first and, while it’s easy for a human to know that, search engines have to write code to emulate how the human brain would think.
Only take the confidence/relevance number as a reference in case there’s competition, such as another person or brand with a similar name. I’ve seen entities with a confidence score as low as 10 to achieve a knowledge panel.
These tools also return a link to your actual entity page on Google (e.g., https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05f77_x takes you to Wix’s entity/knowledge panel) where you can see what the entity looks like. Based on experience, I usually see changes getting picked up here first and weeks later appearing on Google for general searchers.
In mid-2023, Google made changes and broadened the sources it considers for knowledge panel data, making it possible to get a knowledge panel even when the API doesn’t recognize you.
In fact, I’m not identified on the API, but I have a panel. The best way to know, like always, is to Google it!
Keep in mind that some knowledge panels change based on location and have different designs on desktop compared to mobile.
Claim and manage your knowledge panel
Once you earn a knowledge panel, you can leave it as it is or claim it. Google requires you to prove ownership of the entity, which you can learn more about right here.
![A screenshot of the verification process. It reads: “Get verified on Google. Fill out this form to get verified on Google and claim the knowledge panel you represent. Each submission will be reviewed as quickly as possible in light of COVID-19 impacts to our team. You will receive an email at [redacted] once we have an update. Please contact us if you have any questions.](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a484d4_d73e9103acbc46afb266623b68497cac~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_84,h_59,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/a484d4_d73e9103acbc46afb266623b68497cac~mv2.png)
After you claim your entity, you can request changes to the existing fields. Google requires some justification and sources to approve the changes you requested; if they get approved, the changes usually go live in a few days.
From this point forward, you mostly need to keep all these information sources about your brand consistent and up to date to ensure that you maintain your knowledge panel and the search visibility you’ve earned.
Use your knowledge panel in tandem with your other digital marketing efforts
If creating a knowledge panel is relevant to your business, it’s time to start building out your entity. Here are some things to remember as you do so:
Auditing your brand is the first step to ensure consistency and relevancy.
Part of the process is to spread the word about your brand by disseminating consistent and relevant information across the web. So, in a way, getting a knowledge panel may just be an added benefit from marketing your brand.
Your profile’s appearance might be different based on the searchers location and until it becomes a more robust entity, you might see information change or Google changing the main source of the knowledge panel.
In many cases, a knowledge panel is more of a status symbol or a luxury than an absolute necessity, so use this SERP feature as an add-on to your other marketing activities that might be more relevant for your business goals. It’s all about having an integrated marketing strategy as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket!
Gus Pelogia - SEO Product Manager Gus Pelogia is a journalist turned SEO since 2012. He’s currently an SEO product manager at Indeed, the top job site in the world. Every day, he writes tickets for small and large initiatives and works in a cross-functional team with writers, UX, engineers, and product managers.