Three Different Types of Artist Knowledge Panels

Knowledge Panels are search features that appear when search results are shown for notable people. Only a small percentage of people are featured this special way in search results – not everyone gets one. In order for a certain Person’s identity to be shown in a Knowledge Panel certain common requirements must be met, but the way people are described and featured differ based on what kind of artist they are, what kind of works they’ve done. We’ll take a look at three different artists and the Artist Knowledge Panels they get featured in. I personally know all three of these artists.

George Dubec – Known as “The Ultimate Networker” George Dubec’s books have qualified him for a Knowledge Panel when his name is Googled. Google considers Amazon.com, where George’s books are sold, as an authoritative source for authors, no pun intended. George’s Knowledge Panel also has a link at the top directly to his website, branded with his name, making his case and exceptionally good example of the results of maintaining a strong online identity.

Amazon uses structured data markup in its artist bio pages aka author pages. Amazon also uses structured data markup on Product pages. When these two types of pages are combined, linking to each other, it’s a powerful means to train the Google search crawler to return results that point to Amazon.com when people search for George.

Yaacov Heller – Known for his metalwork, sculpture in public places, Yaacov Heller’s listing on Wikipedia qualified him for a Knowledge Panel in Google Search Results.

Google considers Wikipedia an authoritative source for notable people. Wikipedia doesn’t have separate pages for any of Yaacov’s work yet, but the site does use structured data markup and the Article schema to instruct Google what’s being described on each page, indicating precisely what concept each Wikipedia page is dedicated to.

James Pelish – Known by his stage name: Jim Pelish, my dad, is an actor, an inventor and award winning painter. His listing on IMDB focuses just a portion of his screen work, but is enough to trigger Google to designate a Knowledge Panel for Jim.

IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) uses structured data to publish info about him and his movies. Four of the movies my father remembers being in are listed on IMDB.

Unfortunately, there’s screen work he is accredited for that is not listed at IMDB, for example his role in the ZZ Top music video for “Burger Man“, his small part in the motion picture “Drop Zone”, and work he did on a commercial for a taser like device. While it’s great for sites like IMDB to give credit to hard working artists, it’s not realistic to expect a secondary source for information to be accurate and complete all the time.

Artists and their representatives have to settle for the incomplete treatment and sometimes accreditation that’s just wrong. Using a strong curation tool like Art Gallery Plugin allows artists and curators to get results like these big sites without having to be big. It’s an affordable and easy to use curation solution, that’s Rich Results compliant, everyone with a WordPress website can use. 

All Three Examples Share One thing In Common:

They All Originate From Pages Published Using Structured Data

These three highly talented gentlemen achieved Knowledge Panel status on Google in different ways, due to different kinds of work. In all three of the cases the websites publishing the information used schemas. The different sites all publish their information “marked up” with code that’s typically invisible to web visitors, but not to Google.

Art Gallery Plugin allows creators to leverage schemas and structured data to curate pages about all of the works a Person is accredited for in one site: books, paintings, sculptures, movies and more! It works with the #1 website publishing system, WordPress, and is exclusively available here, from Massive Impressions. No other solution for curating art, artists, work and industry leadership has as wide of a scope and as precise of an ability to capture and publish information about People and Creative Works.