Today Google is announcing a new tool in search: The Knowledge Graph. It will be phased in over the next few days for all users. The Knowledge Graph adds new results to your search. You will see panels on the right side of the search results page with additional, factual, information about the search topic. This will have more relevant, factual information about your search (like historical, biographical, news, etc.) and list related topics. Google will also have you clarify exactly what you are looking for to help you better find what you need.
The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.
Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.
This is a huge improvement in searching and can help teachers and student find better results and better information in their searches.
Here's a video describing it in detail:
Source: Google Official Blog
Related:
Google for Educators Resources