icze4r communication

I’m old. At this point, I honestly couldn’t tell you when I first wanted a Google Knowledge Panel. I believe it was born out of the desire to have things that people did not want me to have: the fact that people always have tried to ‘gate-keep’ me out of their own little sekrit klubs.

According to Google itself, the Google Knowledge Panel probably showed up in May of 2012. And I can tell you what people felt about it: they fucking hated it.

There was a bunch of talk about how people felt that it was largely trying to antiquate Wikipedia itself: after all, the thing largely drew first on Freebase, which seemed to be a wiki-like ‘endeavor’ to create, shall we say, a ‘knowledge database’, describing people. So, basically, what Wikidata is now. Only I don’t think Freebase was anywhere near as useful.

Far as I can remember, Google ate Freebase’s ass in, like, 2010. And then, in 2012, it started trying to sniff Wikipedia’s dick, with this Knowledge Panel thing. As I’ve previously described, nobody gives a fiddler’s fuck about this thing. Nobody famous, anyways.

The problems with Google trying to copy Wikipedia’s ‘homework’ are obvious, and the entire endeavor was replete and bursting with the sort of disinformational splendor one could expect from whatever the fuck things edit Wikipedia. I could probably research a bunch of shit and show you a bunch of links that will, no doubt, one day be deceased, but who cares? I don’t care and you don’t, either. These are my thoughts on this, not the media’s. Anyways, if you give a shit, one of the most-common problems was that the Google Knowledge Panels kept on saying that people were dead, and Google, as per fucking usual, took a fucking dog’s age to correct this. This is probably why Google is now very, very careful of putting dates of birth and other shit in the Panels.

I don’t know what happens at Google. I was once invited to Google, and did not go, because who has the fucking money?. But I have to imagine that their internal structure is something akin to infinite monkeys with typewriters, herding cats. Shit either gets done, or it does not.

Google, on one hand, does not seem to know what the fuck it is doing, on multiple fronts. The Knowledge Panel is one of them. The Panel itself is good for exactly nothing, and largely only functions as some sort of vanity plate. You really want it, if you’re nobody; but if you’re somebody, it’s not even in the top 500 list of your priorities.

At the time of its creation, Google seemed to largely be fantasizing about how it would sculpt the future of the Internet. Google had decided, in all of its ‘wisdom’, that it alone had the right to decide what the Internet looked like. It tried this stupid bullshit with amp; it tried this stupid bullshit by trying to enforce how webpages should be constructed, in order to get ranked; and every single time, the robots just beat it. Over, and over, until the end of time. And then, there’s this.

I use Google’s services. I’m Verified on YouTube. I used Google+, seriously. I even tried to get Verified on YouTube through Google+ (it didn’t work). I have my work e-mail through them.

I fucking hate Google. I only use Google because I view it as the most reliable of all possible services. I do not like it. I welcome its replacement, with open arms. Fuck this shitty company.

Part and parcel of my reasoning for hating it is that Google went to great lengths to shape the web the way it wanted. I don’t appreciate that. I don’t really have a ‘problem’ with Google figuring out a way to ‘rank’ content: being primarily a search engine (one would fucking hope, at least), ranking your content is a necessary step.

The thing is, though, trying to get people to make webpages the way you want, it just diluted the creativity that was once found throughout the entire Internet. There was once a time when no two websites looked the same— and if they did, that was a faux pas! You stole code!. Now, everybody has a fucking shitty-ass WordPress. Even me.

The other thing is, if you get people to all make webpages the same way, then that just gives the robots an easy way to rank to the top. Also also, why should anyone have to ‘fight’ to get what they want, ranked at the top?

For example: my main website is ranked fifth for my username. Why? Partially because I tried to handcode my own website, and Google doesn’t like that. Meanwhile, the WordPress blog for my name? Ranked first, baby. You can’t beat 100 percent.

This website, by the by, was first started (though has now transmogrified into something else) because, the award-winning formula to rank #1 is just to do this. Just get a dot com with your preferred term of choice. Google says that shit don’t matter. I know better.

Anyways, back to my main fucking topic: Why? Why, when you own a Google Knowledge Panel, can you not just put your website right at the fucking top? Why the fuck do I have to ‘fight’ with a sekrit algorithm? Why do I have to guess at how I could rank at the top? It’s foolishness.

How it made me feel

I got my Panel somewhere around April of 2021. It is now June 9th, 2024, in the middle of the night, as I write this. So, we’re going on three years, now.

At two years, I didn’t really feel anything. Like— when I got Verified on YouTube, for a little bit, I felt different. I felt like a winner. If I had gotten Verified on Twitter— well. I guess we’ll never know, huh?

But, that’s just the thing. When you get something like this, the end result is, you don’t really feel it. You get your Cool Leg Degree; you get your Master’s; you get your PhD; you get multiple of these things. They don’t come up off your wall and give you a blowjob or something, to keep you warm at night. They mean nothing. They’re only there so you can get a job. And this, this is something even lesser. This is, but of course, substantially less important than having a pretty lady sitting on my lap.

Like— initially, when I first got it, I felt jubilant. I had won.

Now I look at the fuckin’ thing, and I’m like, eh.

A year ago, I might have been sad on the day when it went away.

Now?

Who gives a shit.

Yahoo!

I can feel it.

When Yahoo! Search was dying, it was pretty fucking obvious. Nobody could find what they wanted; and Google was sitting there, in the background, eating Yahoo!’s lunch.

Yahoo! itself was never good. Google, on the other hand, was so good that it was almost amazing. You could find things!

Now, though?

There are several phenomena that are happening to Google Search, and these things are going to end its usefulness:

Prior historical results being basically wiped from Google Search when some newsworthy incident happens
- This one is interesting, because it absolutely prevents any sort of research on some trending topics.
An inability for the source of some information to rank on Google
- I have a shitload of books that are on my website. You have to dig to find any links to them, on Google, even when you search the exact titles— even when you load up their individual Knowledge Panels!
Malware / spam websites being able to rank on page 1 (this destroyed Yahoo! Search in a single weekend)
Information older than 3+ years seems to just be gone
An inability to actually collate information related to highly-searched-for individuals (like how Brad Pitt, for like 2 years, had the wrong fucking Twitter account attached to his Panel; or how Wikipedia summaries used to just stay in the fucking Panels way too long)

And, finally:

AN INABILITY TO ACTUALLY FUCKING FIND ANYTHING YOU WANT

That’s a double whammy!

How I feel about it, now

I use my writing to put things to bed. And this, my friends, is something that I want to forget all about.

When I released my comic book— something that I’ve been planning to do since I was a little girl— I tried to get it into my Google Knowledge Panel. The comic book is ‘of Two Rabbits’.

It was Hell.

The above little factoid proved to me, one fucking thing: the people at Google are putting at least some of the information in the Panel in, manually.

Because I listed the book as ‘of Two Rabbits’, and it came out as three different things before it was finally corrected. The only way that could have happened (I gave them the title again, and they put ‘Of Two Rabbits’, not ‘of’) was if they manually entered it.

So this entire くそみたいなショー is just infinite monkeys typing.

As someone who writes—I detest the titles ‘Writer’, or, worse, ‘Author’— they place inordinate importance on me— getting my hard work wrong is not something I ever want to deal with, again. Because this was so fucking frustrating!

Every time I place my happiness in the hands of humans, they shit on it.

So I shan’t be doing that anymore.

An addendum: you see the ‘cover’ image for Bhue: the Tricksters? Not only is it capitalized wrong (I JUST noticed this!), but, I’ve always known that the cover is wrong.

See, when you upload your book to Google, they tell you— give us your front cover, your actual book content, and then your back cover. So I did.

It deleted the front cover when I uploaded the back cover (all appropriately named). And it just put that there. And I never fixed it.
Do you think I should?

I don’t think I even care.

Maybe I will!

Google Knowledge Panel

By Margaret Gel

On June 9, 2024

In How-To

I hate this fucking thing.

See, you’re reading this because you want one. You’re wondering how to get one. You’re thinking it’s impossible to get one.

It’s very simple. To get a Google Knowledge Panel, you need to write a book and upload it to Google Books under the name you want to get a Google Knowledge Panel under, or, you release music under the name you want the Google Knowledge Panel to be titled. That’s it. That’s the whole damned thing.

As of this writing, I have something like 24 Google Knowledge Panels. Some come; some go; some are dead. Some are permadead. I don’t know which is which anymore, and I don’t care to keep track of any of them.

When it comes to Google Knowledge Panels, I have a TV show. I have a record label. At one point, I had a credit for appearing in ‘movies’. The links above may one day die as well. With strange aeons, and all that jazz.

But there are some that I’m going to keep. Such as the one for my first book, my second book, and my third. In point of fact, I am Verified on / with Google 8 fucking times.

The eighth is a secret tool, that’ll help us later.

In Cool Leg, I was taught to spout my ethos (my authority) on a matter, first. Then there was Pathos, and Logos. Fuck Pathos. These are not baby kittens. This shit is fucking dumb.

In the past, and probably still today, Google has scraped Wikipedia, and especially Wikidata, in order to figure out who to make a Google Knowledge Panel of. I think their thinking was, hey, if Wikipedia is really well-guarded, and they only write about notable peoples, then it’s a nice little shortcut. And so, everybody else thought so. Which led to people spamming their autobiographies on Wikipedia, looking for an easy Google Knowledge Panel.

For what it’s worth, it works. For what it’s also worth, if you’re a YouTuber with 1,000+ subscribers, you can write your own article on Wikitubia, just fine, and that will probably get you a Google Knowledge Panel. But it’s not very stable, and there are basically only children running that place. You really want to argue with kids? On the Internet?

So don’t do that. Just write a book or release a song, and get your Knowledge Panel. If you want it that much.

I thought about not writing this, but, it’s no ‘trick’. This is simply how it works.

Other things to think about

Do you want your own icon for your Google Knowledge Panel?

This thing.

Then go to the Hamburger menu on your Google Knowledge Panel, and click Send Feedback. Then tell them what you want the icon to be, give them the URL from some good place and the webpage that you got the icon from (for example, I used my verified YouTube page), and they’ll usually change your icon for you, after you ask them 3 or 4 times. They’re not too bright, over there.

You can also change your title this way.

How do I get my social media profiles in my Google Knowledge Panel?

If you have a Wikipedia page and a Wikidata entry, add them to the Wikidata entry. If not, Send Feedback on the Google Knowledge Panel and tell them what your social media profiles are. If you’ve gotten Verified as the person controlling the Panel, which you should absolutely do by clicking the Hamburger menu and saying ‘Claim this knowledge panel’, then they’ll already be able to confirm what your social media is.

How do I get my Entity Home (my website’s address) to appear in my Google Knowledge Panel?

Wikidata. Put your website in there.

If not, pray. You could ask them to put it in there for you, through Send Feedback. Or you could have a website with the same name as your Google Knowledge Panel. Your choice.

Help! My Google Knowledge Panel keeps on disappearing!

Yes it does. Google does not care about you. Always remember that.

The Knowledge Panel will disappear randomly for about a year and a half. After that, it’ll usually stay. The best you can do is just register a bunch of social media profiles and put the same information on all of them. The Google Knowledge Panel works by collating all the information about a person, into one fucking place. If the information isn’t the same all over, it’ll have more trouble than it would if the information was the same.

How do I get images of myself in my Google Knowledge Panel?

Mostly pray. But you can look at what Jason Barnard does, by Googling him.

The trick is just have a bunch of websites and post pictures of yourself, with alt text that says your name, or the name of your Google Knowledge Panel.

Contrary to popular belief, no, they don’t have to be pictures of real flesh-and-blood human beings. Lots of cartoon characters get through.

Additional nonsense

How do I get my Twitter carousel to appear on my Search Engine Results Page (SERP)?

Tweet consistently, but rarely. It goes away if you tweet too much; it goes away if you delete tweets; it goes away for no reason.

How do I get the Articles carousel to appear on my Search Engine Results Page?

You have to write for some sort of publication where they have an Authors page, and you have an Author page there, and also, you’ve written an article. Google has to consider it a News site. Once Google considers it to be that, you’ll be able to eventually get an Articles carousel to pop up (in theory). Haven’t managed to do it! Probably never will! But that’s the theory.

okay that’s it

go home

wait I have more (somehow)

When I first got my Google Knowledge Panel, it was from the first book, Dragons: the Anunnaki. It happened pretty much instantly, but I only noticed about 5 or 7 days afterwards.

This, alone, is not enough to keep a public Google Knowledge Panel. So, I released music. And slowly, as I released more, and more, and more? I haven’t seen this thing disappear for like a year and a half or so, now. It is finally here to stay.

The thing is, though, it’s not really that useful. The only people who really want a Google Knowledge Panel are those who are not actually famous. Very few really famous people actually claim these. They’re unloved by actual celebrities.

Tom Cruise is one of the outliers who actually has someone managing his Panel. Brad Pitt’s Panel is unclaimed; so is Keanu Reeves’. Morgan Freeman and Samuel L. Jackson’s Panels are similarly unclaimed, though Robert Downey Jr.’s is claimed. To give you an idea of how many people actually give a shit. (This is assuming that someone with these celebrities is actually the one who has claimed the Panel. I’ve heard stories of the wrong people claiming Panels…)

Overall, figuring out how to generate one for myself was an interesting journey. Unfortunately, Google is going down the tubes just like Amazon is, and it’s not gonna fucking matter, pretty soon.

Will A.I. be the future? I have no idea. I’ve been in machine learning / A.I. for the past 11 or 12 years. I thought that VTubing would be the future, and here we are: everybody’s a goddamned VTuber.

It would be interesting to teach you how to ‘poison’ an A.I.’s results about yourself, but I largely don’t want to tell you, and I absolutely do not actually care to any further.

Thoughts and Feelings about the Google Knowledge Panel