A new website from Wolfram Alpha will attempt to identify any image you show it, though it’s more amusing than practical at the moment. 
 
 To check it out, head to ImageIdentify.com and drop in any photo from your computer or mobile device. The site will spend a few seconds mulling it over before taking a guess at what the picture is showing. 
 
 It’s pretty amazing when it works. Using the site, I was able to figure the breed of dog that kept following my wife and I around on our honeymoon (miniature pinscher) and the exact type of flower from a hike in Los Angeles (larkspur). It also does pretty well identifying simpler things, like the pizza photo I used in a Wednesday blog post. 
 
 But in my experience, those flashes of brilliance were the exception, not the rule. Wolfram’s tool is no good at identifying tech products (it thought an Apple TV remote was an alligator clip) and it came up with only vague or outright incorrect guesses for some of the other flora and fauna I showed it. Perhaps because of demand, more times than not the site threw up a “please try again” error. 
 
 In a blog post, CEO Stephan Wolfram readily admits that the tool has plenty of blind spots—some of which can be fairly amusing—and notes that it will get better with experience. To that end, users can help out by indicating when the system is right or wrong, and either choosing from a few next-best guesses or typing in the correct identification. It’s definitely worth trying out if you have a bunch of photos and a few minutes to kill. 
 
 Why this matters: Assuming the system improves over time, it has plenty of potential beyond your own amusement. Stephan Wolfram gives the example of a program that provides statistics on a large number of images. One could imagine some kind of tool to itemize all the things you discovered on a vacation, or translate an image of food into dietary information. Developers can build these sorts of things using Wolfram’s programming and cloud computing tools, so the basic ImageIdentify site is just the beginning. ||||| One of the most amazing things you can do with Wolfram Alpha is ask it what planes are overhead. If you're on your phone, it will pull your location, then cross reference that with a database of flights, including their altitude, angle, and even their flight number and aircraft type. But in many ways, Stephen Wolfram's latest search tool is more impressive. It's designed to identify anything in a picture. You just upload a photo, and get a computer-generated guess just a few seconds later. 
 
 "It won’t always get it right." 
 
 "It won’t always get it right, but most of the time I think it does remarkably well," Wolfram writes. "And to me what’s particularly fascinating is that when it does get something wrong, the mistakes it makes mostly seem remarkably human." In some brief testing, that's a pretty fair assessment. I plugged in things like Yosemite National Park's Half Dome and was told it was "elevation," while a photo of a gecko was identified as a "night lizard." Remarkably though, it identified a picture of a cow as "black angus," and two cups of ice cream as "frozen yogurt." Close enough. 
 
 How all this ascends beyond assaulting a website with photos of your last vacation or what's in your kitchen, is tantalizing. Wolfram says he imagines the project could be useful if applied to large collections of photos to attempt to identify and categorize them. The technology can also be used by others to build image identification into their apps. Think about the visual recognition found within Google+'s photos, but in other photo apps and services. 
 
 The system was trained with cats, sloths, and Chewbacca 
 
 In order to train the system, Wolfram says it was fed "a few tens of millions" of images so that it could learn what was what. That "seemed very comparable to the number of distinct views of objects that humans get in their first couple of years of life," he added. The system was also given tricky images like cats wearing spacesuits, sloths wearing party hats, and even Chewbacca — all things it failed at identifying correctly, but gracefully so: 
 
 Now it's capable of recognizing about 10,000 common kinds of objects, though Wolfram notes that it still has difficulty recognizing specific people, art, and things that are not "real everyday objects." 
 
 The new image project joins Google's Goggles and Amazon's Firefly as rapid identification tools, though is notably designed without the intent to try and sell you anything with what it finds. It also comes just a little while after Flickr's new Magic View, as well as Microsoft's research site that determines people's genders and age based on photos. Unlike Microsoft though, Wolfram says it keeps a thumbnail version of the photo after you've uploaded it (so it can be shared with other people), and that it's collecting the images to keep on training its system, so be mindful of what you send in. 
 
 Here's how it did against a handful of different images: 
 
 Reasonably close. 
 
 Welp. 
 
 I can kind of see it... 
 
 Which is pretty much just: ||||| Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms . We respect your privacy . 
 
 Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its “Knowledge Graph” today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match query terms but for “entities” or concepts that the words describe. 
 
 Knowledge Graph? “Graph” is a technical term used to describe how a set of objects are connected. Google has used a “link graph” to model how pages link to each other, in order to help determine which are popular and relevant for particular searches. Facebook has used a “social graph” understand how people are connected. “Knowledge Graph” is Google’s term for how it is building relationships between different people, places and things and report facts about these entities. 
 
 Big Change, Subtle Appearance 
 
 Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the coming change. At the time, I felt what was described seemed more an extension of things Google had already been doing rather than a dramatic shift. Now having seen it first-hand, I stand corrected. The WSJ had it right. This is indeed a big change in line with other major launches like Search Plus Your World last January and Universal Search in 2007. 
 
 Big change, but I don’t think it’ll be a shocking change to most Google users who will begin seeing it over the coming days on Google.com, if they’re searching in US English. 
 
 Google will still look largely the same as it does now. Knowledge Graph information flows into new units — they have no official name (and I did ask), so I’ll call them “knowledge panels.” These panels appear to the right of Google’s regular results, rather than disrupt those familiar links: 
 
 Knowledge panels don’t always appear, only showing up only when Google deems them relevant. But when Google does think they’re relevant, they’re a pretty cool search exploration tool. When the head of Google Search, Amit Singhal, let me play with the new system following his keynote talk at our SMX London show yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of it like a form of StumbleUpon or channel surfing for search. 
 
 Fact Surfing 
 
 A search for Star Trek brought up a panel that included a reference to Star Trek: Voyager, my favorite of all the series. Jumping to explore that, the Voyager box included a reference to Babylon 5, another favorite sci-fi show of mine. Jumping to that box, there was a reference to Claudia Christian, who wonderfully played one of the main characters in Babylon 5, Susan Ivanova. I surfed over for a look. 
 
 If you’ve ever started reading a Wikipedia page and then gotten lost jumping from one topic to another, that’s the experience I think many are about to discover with Google. You’ll not only discover answers to factual questions, but you’ll likely quickly explore more than you had planned and have fun doing it. 
 
 3.5 Billion Facts About 500 Million Objects 
 
 Google says it has compiled over 3.5 billion facts, which include information about and relationships between 500 million objects or “entities,” as it sometimes calls them. In general, entities are persons, places and things. You know, nouns. 
 
 In particular, these are just some of the categories of objects Google has facts about: 
 
 Actors, Directors, Movies 
 
 Art Works & Museums 
 
 Cities & Countries 
 
 Islands, Lakes, Lighthouses 
 
 Music Albums & Music Groups 
 
 Planets & Spacecraft 
 
 Roller Coasters & Skyscrapers 
 
 Sports Teams 
 
 Again, those are just some of the categories. The relationships are also as important as the facts. The relationships allow the Knowledge Graph to know which actors to list for a particular movie or which spacecraft have visited a planet. 
 
 The Most Popular Facts 
 
 How do you keep from getting overwhelmed with useless facts? Google picks out the facts for each object that are most sought in relation to that object. 
 
 “We are showing all the things that people look for in a given query,” Singhal told me. 
 
 Consider these two knowledge panels, one for Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, the other for architect Frank Lloyd Wright (you can click to enlarge): 
 
 For both, you’re told when they were born and where they were educated. After that, the remaining facts shown differ. 
 
 Only Groening has facts about his parents and siblings listed. Why? Look closely at the names: Margaret (Marge), Homer, Lisa. Groening named characters after his own family. Looking at searches related to Groening, Google can tell these are commonly sought answers. 
 
 For Groening, the books he’s authored are listed. For Wright, his famous buildings are. That makes sense. People are far more interested in structures by Wright than by books by him. Indeed, Google’s autocomplete suggestions — which are based on the most popular terms related to a core search topic — reflect this: 
 
 I found it fascinating to see what was shown, as I ran through various classes of searches. For Disneyland, popular rides were shown. For a ride like Space Mountain, the duration was shown (really, only 3 minutes?). For an astronaut, I was shown the missions and overall time they’d spent in space (how cool to have that as a fact about yourself). For Buckingham Palace, the size of floor space was listed. For Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, their estimated net worth was shown. 
 
 Each knowledge panel has a “People also search for” area at the bottom which lists related people, places or things. Again, the relationships are determined by looking at search data. People who search for Groening, for example, often search for David X. Cohen, who co-created Futurama with Groening. 
 
 For search marketers, or anyone interested in how people search, these panels have become another great discovery resource along with keyword research tools like Google Trends, Google Insights, Google Correlate or the AdWords Keyword Tool. 
 
 Facts But Not Actions 
 
 One thing I found lacking was that the knowledge panels I saw often lacked links to let people take actions related to these objects. For example, one of the popular things people want in relation to Buckingham Palace is to book tickets for tours. However, the panel had no options for this. 
 
 In contrast, the new “Snapshots” announced (but still about a week from going live) as part of Bing’s relaunch last week are heavy on trying to help people do things like book tickets or reservations. 
 
 Why not have actions? 
 
 “We will, of course, explore that, but right now, we just want to take it out and see how it works,” Singhal said. 
 
 Occasionally you can take actions via the links to some of the source providers of facts, as with some music searches that might credit Songkick or StubHub. 
 
 Which Andromeda Did You Mean? 
 
 For some searches, there may be more than one entity that Google has facts for related to a search. In these cases, rather than make the wrong guess, Google will put up a “See results box” as shown below for Andromeda: 
 
 Andromeda could mean, in Google’s Knowledge Graph, the galaxy, the TV show or the Swedish band. This box, also known as a disambiguation box, allows people to make the right choice. 
 
 Where Do The Facts Come From? 
 
 How does Google know any of these facts? Google Squared was an initial attempt in 2009 to extract facts from the web. Google still has that technology, but the service was never that impressive on accuracy and closed as standalone site last year. 
 
 Rather, it was Google’s purchase of Metaweb in 2010 that really jump-started the Knowledge Graph. Metaweb was building both the relationships and, though Freebase, a database of facts. 
 
 Since that time, Singhal said Google’s massively grown the fact database. Contributions happen with Freebase, but data also comes from publicly-available sources like Wikipedia and The CIA World Factbook and even information out of Google Books. Beyond that, Google also licenses data from others. 
 
 “Wherever we can get our hands on structured data, we add it,” Singhal said. 
 
 Fixing Bad Data 
 
 Drawing from Wikipedia and other public sources means that there’s no guarantee that the facts are accurate. That’s why the knowledge panels on Google all have a “Report a problem” link at the bottom. 
 
 If you click on that, you can then indicate if any particular fact is incorrect. Singhal said that Google will use a combination of computer algorithms and human review to decide if a particular fact should be corrected 
 
 If Google makes a change, the source provider is told. This mean, in particular, Wikipedia will be informed of any errors. It doesn’t have to change anything, but apparently the service is looking forward to the feedback. 
 
 “They really are excited about it. They get to get feedback from a much bigger group of people,” Singhal said. 
 
 Will Publisher Traffic Drop? 
 
 Search engines have increasingly moved toward showing direct answers in their results over the years. Such efforts have worried some publishers, leaving them wondering if they’ll be left out of receiving search traffic. After all, if search engines provide answers right within their results, why would anyone click away? 
 
 Google’s Knowledge Graph is going to massively increase the number of direct answers shown, which will almost certainly renew concerns. 
 
 Singhal’s response is that publishers shouldn’t worry. He said that most of these types of queries, Google has found, don’t take traffic away from most sites. Part of this seems to be that the boxes encourage more searching, which in turn still eventually takes people to external sites. 
 
 Still, some are going to lose out, he admits. But he sees that as something that was going to happen inevitably, anyway, using a “2+2” metaphor. If people are searching for 2+2, why shouldn’t Google give a direct answer to that versus sending searchers to a site? By the way, Google does do math like this already and has for years. 
 
 Below, you can hear Singhal talk more about this when asked by a member of the audience at SMX London yesterday: 
 
 My concern is what happens if publishers have compiled great information that someone at Wikipedia or Freebase harvests into a database. For example, if a Disneyland fan site has organized a list of ride durations by doing original legwork, what credit do they get if that data is used? Facts can’t be trademarked, at least in the US, so anyone can help themselves assuming they don’t duplicate the exact format or presentation. 
 
 Google does list credit links to places like Wikipedia. In turn, Wikipedia does give credit (albeit in a way that doesn’t help search rankings) to the sources it draws from. But that puts actual source material two clicks away from the searcher, assuming the searcher wants to go beyond the fact they already received. 
 
 This is one that has to be watched closely. As I wrote before, it seems likely the Knowledge Graph will impact a relatively small set of sites that focus on facts, sites that already likely exposing answers in their listing descriptions and so not getting traffic anyway. But we’ll see. 
 
 It’s also important to remember that the “main” results aren’t disappearing. Consider again the Frank Lloyd Wright search, this time with the knowledge panel in context with the regular results: 
 
 As you can see, links to sites outside of Google remain to the left and in the most viewed area of a search results page. 
 
 Being Included 
 
 What if you want to be part of the new knowledge panels and Knowledge Graph in general? Singhal said that at the moment, there’s no mechanism designed for sites to do this. IE, if you run a site about Frank Lloyd Wright, there’s no way to be associated as some type of suggested source for the Frank Lloyd Wright panel. 
 
 Potentially, you could head over Freebase, open an account and contribute. Of course, I’m pretty sure adding your blog to a horrible list of blogs like this isn’t going to help. Maybe other categories might be more successful, but I’d hold off, for the moment. 
 
 Tagging parts of your pages with commonly used schema might be helpful, though I wouldn’t do this solely in hopes of getting your facts into the Knowledge Graph. The articles below have more about using schema: 
 
 Ads, Mobile & Tablet Formats 
 
 Anyone familiar with Google’s ads will immediately wonder what happens when the panel shows. 
 
 Singhal said that if there are also ads along with a knowledge panel for any search, the ads will still display. Google also has different formats for when a query has a few, many or no ads. I haven’t seen these, but I’ll try to update as they become visible after the launch. 
 
 In addition, Google also uses special formats to make the panels work well on tablet and mobile devices, he said. They aren’t restricted to just desktop search, so that’s good news for those of you who want an easier time to cheat at pub and bar quiz nights. 
 
 Sadly, there’s no way to just search the Knowledge Graph directly. It only appears with regular Google Search. 
 
 The Competition 
 
 Google’s not alone in having a knowledge graph, of course. Wolfram Alpha, launched in 2009, has continued to refine its service. It got a big boost being picked as a search partner by Apple to help power Siri (even though that recently embarrassed Apple on a particular search about smart phones). 
 
 As for Bing, it has a partnership with Wolfram Alpha plus owns Powerset technology that, somewhat similar to the Knowledge Graph, tries to deeply understand the meanings of words, rather than just really match patterns of letters. 
 
 But Bing hasn’t really seemed to capitalize on either its Wolfram partnership nor Powerset. Really, the Knowledge Graph seems to be going more head-to-head with Wolfram Alpha. Does it? 
 
 “Wolfram is far more computational,” Singhal said, explaining that Wolfram Alpha’s goal seems to be finding ways that you can effectively use facts in computations. 
 
 For example, you can enter cars in california / california population into Wolfram Alpha to have it take those two facts and come up with an average (about 1 car for every two people, by the way, using 2009 data). 
 
 Google’s not trying to perform these types of calculations. The focus is instead on providing popular facts. 
 
 The Future 
 
 The big picture, of course, is that some day the Knowledge Graph won’t just be used for facts. Instead, if Google can better tag actual web pages to entities, then it can better understand what those pages are about and related to, which might increase the relevancy of its regular results. 
 
 That’s down the line, as are many other changes to the knowledge panel themselves. Today represents only a start. 
 
 “This is just a baby step, in my view, to expose this to our users,” Singhal said. 
 
 To learn more about the Google Knowledge Graph, see coverage from others across the web organized here on Techmeme, the official Google blog post, plus the official video, below: 
 
 Related Articles
– You probably can already identify the contents of most of your photos, but this is still fun. A new website from Stephen Wolfram, whom you may know from the search tool WolframAlpha, lets you drag and drop any photo; it will then in theory identify what's in it. Right now, ImageIdentify manages some impressive feats, the Verge reports: For instance, it was able to tell that a picture of a cow was a black angus. On the other hand, it thought a cupcake was a bottle cap. The Wolfram Language team is happy to acknowledge the mistakes. In a blog post, Wolfram notes that "somehow the errors seemed very understandable, and in a sense very human. It seemed as if what ImageIdentify was doing was successfully capturing some of the essence of the human process of identifying images." In the meantime, it does have some practical uses: At PC World, Jared Newman writes that "using the site, I was able to figure the breed of dog that kept following my wife and I around on our honeymoon (miniature pinscher) and the exact type of flower from a hike in Los Angeles (larkspur)." And we can expect ImageIdentify to get better at its job, since it keeps copies of the images you post and learns from them; its abilities come from the study of tens of millions of pictures, Wolfram says. You can also tell the site whether its analysis was correct. It's not the only such system, the Verge notes, pointing to efforts like Google Goggles. (What would it say about this smiley face in space?)