Claiming Your Knowledge Panel on Google

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A Google knowledge panel is a box that comes up in the sidebar when you search for your name or your book's name.   Mine looks like this:

First off, if you don't see a knowledge panel in the sidebar when you Google your name, take a look at this post John Doppler wrote for the Alliance of Independent Authors. I wrote a similar post on getting knowledge panels for our books. 

Having one of these panels makes you stand out a bit more from everyone else online who shares your name. It gives you a little more visibility on a very important search engine.

What I didn't realize until a couple of months ago was there was a place to claim your knowledge panel.  You can see it at the very bottom of the image above.

Why claim it?  When you click “claim this knowledge panel,” Google pitches it to you:

In case you can't read it, it states: “Make sure your audience sees the most accurate, authoritative, and engaging information about you. You can suggest changes to info that shows up on search, including images, stats, or other facts.” 

When you click “get verified” in the top-right of the image above, they send you here:

After clicking that I was a person with a panel, other things came up:

I was a little confused by the “share button” thing that Google referred to in the first box.  That's because I was looking for a button, not a symbol.  It's really just that share symbol (sort of a ‘less than' symbol from math classes of long ago):

Then the next section, fairly self-explanatory:

And then it gets into proving who you are:

Finally, the biggest proof of all…you, holding your ID.  I made sure to scrub out any personal information using the free Microsoft Paint program on my laptop (because….this is Google).  Directions on doing so are here. 

This all sounds as if it took longer than it did. I think it took me 10 minutes from start to finish. Then I hit submit and was informed that Google would review the information and get back to me.

For more information (from Google), follow this link. 

Do you have a knowledge panel? Do you have any other tips for visibility?

Claiming Your Knowledge Panel on Google:
Click To Tweet

The post Claiming Your Knowledge Panel on Google appeared first on Elizabeth Spann Craig.