Game On! Google’s Knowledge Graph Now Shows Video Games
November 3rd, 2014 by
As of a couple days ago, Google’s Knowledge Graph now includes information about video games! For those of you unfamiliar with the Knowledge Graph, it’s the box that appears on the right side of search results usually for searches like famous people, books, movies, and businesses. It includes pertinent, concise information on the subject matter. Accessible through desktop, mobile, and voice searches, the Knowledge Graph is Google’s way of connecting “real-world things” to provide “more meaningful results.”
With video games, there are a few basic information points that users typically look for when searching for video games. With this addition to the Knowledge Graph, Google has created basic title information for video games, like release date, rating, developer, platform, and publisher, among other things, easy for users to find.
In the past, when I wanted to find the release date for a new video game it would take a bit of clicking around on various sites (usually Wikipedia or IGN) to locate that information. Now I can find out when Far Cry 4 is coming out just by searching “Far Cry 4,” which to me is pretty amazingly convenient!
Another exciting feature for gamers is the “people also search for” section, which enables you to easily discover a new game! It is worth noting, however, that it seems (at least for now) in this section, games in a series are plagued by their previous or original titles. To me, that’s wasted space. I’d obviously know to check out Far Cry 1-3 if searching for Far Cry 4 and would like to see a more varied selection.
I did a test to see if some of my all-time favorite games would also show up in a search (even if they’re much older games). Diablo II, Game of Thrones (the RPG) and the lesser-known Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds all passed! As suspected, however, it seems like the less recognized games, like Game of Thrones, miss out on some of the listed data, such as game photos, ratings, and a “people also search for” section. As an avid gamer, I know better than to judge a game purely based off ratings, but it’s still great data to have, now made easily accessible to searchers via the Knowledge Graph.
For more information on this awesome update, check out VentureBeat’s article including direct info from a Google spokesperson.
