Knowledge Graph Card in Google Maps

Google Maps for desktop added a "quick facts" card that uses information from the Knowledge Graph. If you search for a country, a state, a city, a district, a museum or any other important building, you'll find some information from Wikipedia.

Google Maps cards include a lot of useful information, depending on the context: events, transit information, hotel booking.

{ via +Google Maps }

Google Latitude and Knowledge Graph

Google Latitude was the name of a Google product. When you search for [google latitude], Google now shows the physical coordinates of its headquarters.

This is powered by Knowledge Graph and it's no limited to the Googleplex. It also works for [pentagon latitude], [tour eiffel coordinates] and more.

Google Shows Related Topics

Google's Knowledge Graph boxes now include a list of related topics and some excerpts from articles about them. The related topics are usually linked from the corresponding Wikipedia article.

For example, when you search for [equilateral triangle], Google shows these related topics: Equilateral polygon, Square, Regular polygon, Pythagorean theorem.

Here's another example for [Earth atmosphere]:

Google Answers Complicated Questions

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.

A Google Experiment Hides Knowledge Graph Sidebar

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 Knowledge Graph Gets Confused

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. }