Google has just introduced the "Knowledge Graph" — or semantic analysis — to its most fundamental tool, search. Here's what that means.


From the original article on Mashable: "Starting today, a vast portion of Google Search results will work with you to intuit what you really meant by that search entry.


Type in an ambiguous query like “Kings” (which could mean royalty, a sports team or a now-cancelled TV show), and a new window will appear on the right side of your result literally asking you which entity you meant.


Click on one of those options and your results will be filtered for that search entity.


To understand the gravity of this change, you need to know about the fundamental changes going on behind the scenes at Google Search.


...Google is switching from simple keyword recognition to the identification of entities, nodes and relationships.


In this world, “New York” is not simply the combination of two keywords that can be recognized. It’s understood by Google as a state in the U.S. surrounded by other states, the Atlantic Ocean and with a whole bunch of other, relevant attributes.


As Ben Gomes, Google Fellow, put it, Google is essentially switching “from strings to things."


"In addition to the window which will help users find the right “thing,” Google will also surface summaries for things, which, again, will try to be somewhat comprehensive by tapping into the various databases of knowledge.

A search for Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance, will return a brief summary, photos of Wright, images of his famous projects and perhaps, most interestingly, related “things.”"


Full article: http://mashable.com/2012/05/16/google-knowledge-graph/