Glossary

What is a knowledge graph?

Also known as Google Knowledge Graph, entity graph

Definition

A knowledge graph is a database of entities, such as people, places and businesses, and the links between them. Google's Knowledge Graph feeds the fact panels in search, and a website can publish its own small graph through structured data.

Key points

A knowledge graph stores entities and the links between them, such as a company and its founder.
Google launched its Knowledge Graph in 2012 to understand things rather than strings of words.
A site can publish its own small graph using connected schema markup with stable IDs.

What does it mean in practice?

Search for a well-known company and Google may show a panel with its logo, founder, head office and social profiles. That panel draws on Google's Knowledge Graph. Each fact is a link between two entities, such as a company and the person who founded it.

Google introduced its Knowledge Graph in 2012 to help search understand real-world things, not only matching words.

A business can publish its own small graph too. A dental group's website might use schema markup to say that the organisation has three practices, each with an address, and that a named person is its clinical director. When those nodes use stable IDs and link to each other, machines can read the whole picture.

Why does it matter for AI search?

AI engines work better with clear facts about clear entities. A connected graph on your site, backed by consistent details elsewhere, gives them less room to guess.

It also helps with names. If your business is known by two or three variants, the graph can tie them to one entity. The entity audit rebuilds the graph your site publishes. It checks stable @ids, connected nodes, name variants, verifiable identifiers and authors as Person entities. The schema generator builds the JSON-LD to fill gaps.

These terms connect to knowledge graphs.

Entity, a single thing inside the graph.
Schema markup, how a site adds itself to the picture.
JSON-LD, the usual format for publishing that markup.

Common questions

How do I get into Google's Knowledge Graph?

There is no form to apply. Google builds it from sources it trusts. Clear, consistent details about your business across the web all help, along with a well-kept Google Business Profile and structured data on your site. Mentions on trusted sites make it easier for Google to recognise your business as an entity too.

What is a site's own entity graph?

It is the set of connected structured data your site publishes. Your Organization, its locations, its people and its pages each get a node with a stable ID, and the nodes point to each other. That gives machines one clear picture of who you are.

Reviewed 26 September 2026

All terms A to Z