Now that we have seen businesses and brands appearing in Google’s Knowledge Graph, it is time to set out some steps to appearing in Google’s knowledge graph.
Google’s Knowledge Graph
When you search for a business or brand in the search results, Google is now showing the Google Plus Business or Brand Page next to the search results in what is called Knowledge Graph
Show up in Google’s Knowledge Graph
I must state that this is not definative. Three quaters of my clients sites are appearing within Knowledge Graph and some are not. I will list the steps taken on all sites and possible reasons why some have not appeared in Knowledge graph.
Steps to Appearing in Knowledge Graph
This is assuming you have a Google+ Business Page or Google+ Brand Page.
See Setting up Business or Brand Page
Step 1:
Link your Google+ Business / Brand Page to the Website.
You can do this with the Official Google Badge however this is quite large and does not fit asthetically with every site.
Alternatively you can attach with a rel=publisher tag.
Google Plus Page URL will look like this :
- https://plus.google.com/114669336642325477883
Add your html code :
- <a href=”https://plus.google.com/114669336642325477883?rel=publisher”>My WebSite Name</a>
Add this code to My Websites Name in the footer of your site.
Step 2
Verify the email address in your About Us Page in Google+ Business / Brand page
If you did not have this in your details, add your contact email address, give it a day, when you next login you will see
verify next to your email address, just click and verify the email you recieve from Google.
Step 3
Verify Your Address
When you set up your Google+ Business page, you had the opportunity to claim your business address, this should now be verified by a postcard pin verification from Google
Did you forget to do this ?, don’t panic
Go to Google Places logged into your Google+ business page and go claim it now.
Google+ Brand Pages
If you created a Google+ Brand Page you did not have the opportunity to add an address. Add your business address to your About Us section – Head Office
In Both Cases you will need to have your Address listed on your site, in the footer, in the contact us page or even the About us page on site. Regardless where you add it, it does need to be on site.
Step 4
Use your Google+ Business Page / Brand Page Regularly
Before you jump to the next step, you need to use your Google+ account regularly and build up a following, or people that have you in their circles.
For how long?, this is where it leads to guess work, because all my sites have been running for a minimum of 6 months before Knowledge graph appeared. So i would say 1 month minimum.
You also need to have people that have circled you back or added you to their circles, this in itself will take some time.
How many followers, at best guess you need at least 12 people circling you. See end of Step 5
Step 5
Verify your Google+ Business Page / Brand Page
To do this you need to be logged in.
Go to Google+ Page Verification
Fill in all your details
Note : It does say, address on site
Note: Have a meaniful amount of people that have you in their circles.
What is a meaningful amount ?. The sites that I have not had appear within Google Knowledge Graph is below 11. I do have a site showing in Knowledge Graph with 12 “in circles”.
If you follow these steps you should appear in Knowledge Graph fairly quickly, well within a month of using Google+ regularly
As mentioned above some of these are best guess, because the sites that i have had appear in knowledge graph adopted Google+ from the very beginning or at least been up and running and participating for at least 6 months.
There is also the possability that as Google+ grows so will the criteria. What may need 12 followers to appear in knowledge graph today may be 120 next year. Google always tries to serve the best results, so as more people adopt this it makes sense that that will increase the criteria for inclusion.
Not crucial (that i can tell) to appearing in knowledge graph but immensely beneficial to Brand Awareness and Click through Rates is using your Authorship on site.