One SEO professional asked John Mueller about knowledge panels during his submitted questions segment in a hangout.
In recent months, they noticed Google serving knowledge panels for certain name searches consistently in mobile, and not at all on desktop for the same query.
The examples where they were seeing this pattern include business executives who are notable, but they may not have a Wikipedia page.
Is it possible to understand why a knowledge panel is considered appropriate to serve to mobile users, but may not be served to desktop users in this situation?
Is Wikipedia the critical factor for Google when deciding whether or not to actually show a knowledge panel?
John answered that he isn’t aware of anything specific that they do differently on mobile and desktop, regarding knowledge panels. However, it’s very common across the different search features, depending on the device type and the real estate they have available, that Google will turn on some features and turn off others.
This is done to make sure they are showing something that’s useful to the user based on the query that they were using.
From this perspective, John emphasized that he would not be surprised if you see different knowledge panels on desktop and mobile. He also doesn’t think that there’s any one particular factor where they would say “This is why you’re seeing this knowledge panel at this time and not at another time.”
Sometimes, regarding these kinds of queries where you are seeing this type of change, it’s possible that it’s just on the border of whether they should show a knowledge panel or not.
Then maybe the device type just turns it over.
And it says yes or no in the end.
Google uses a variety of different sources for knowledge panels, and some of that information is what you will see in the knowledge panel directly.
That’s one thing the SEO professional can follow up on a little bit.
Another tip John mentioned is to follow people who are external to Google who share knowledge about knowledge panels on a regular basis.
One of these examples is Jason Barnard, known as The Brand SERP Guy, and John says he does this really well.
This happens at approximately the 35:16 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 35:16
In recent months, I noticed Google serving knowledge panels for certain name searches very consistently in mobile, and not at all on desktop for the same query. These examples–the examples where I’m seeing this pattern are generally business executives who are notable but don’t have a Wikipedia page.
Is it possible to understand why a knowledge panel is considered appropriate to serve mobile users but not to desktop users in this situation? And is Wikipedia the critical factor for Google when deciding whether or not to show a knowledge panel?
John (Answer) 35:52
So I’m not aware of specific things that we do differently on mobile and desktop with regards to knowledge panels. But it’s it’s very common across the different search features that depending on the device type on the kind of the real estate that we have available, we’ll turn some features on and some features off, to try to make sure that we’re showing something that is useful to the user based on the query that they were using.
So from that point of view, I wouldn’t be surprised if you see different knowledge panels on desktop and mobile. But I also don’t think there’s any one particular factor that we’d say, “This is why you’re seeing this knowledge panel at this time and not at another time.”
Sometimes, with regard to these kinds of queries, where you are seeing kind of this change, it might be that it’s just on the border of let’s show a knowledge panel or not. And then maybe the device type just kind of, like, turns it over.
And like says yes or no, in the end. But that’s something where I don’t think there’s like one specific factor that is involved with showing these or not showing these. We do use a variety of different sources for knowledge panels, and some of that you’ll see in the knowledge panel directly.
So that’s kind of some–one thing you can kind of follow up a little bit. Another tip that I would give with regards to these kinds of things is there are some people externally from Google, who spent a lot of time kind of looking into the knowledge panels and like how things are shown when Google picks things up.
And some of these writers write about the things that they found and kind of have their own tools to try that out. I would try to look up some of those folks and get in touch with them and kind of like, look at the details that they figured out.
Jason Barnard is one of the people I know who does this really well. He’s posting on Twitter all the time around knowledge panels. And maybe that gives you some ideas as well of what you could be looking at there.
