The most important person in the English-language world is Frank Sinatra, according to an analysis of Wikipedia articles led by the University of Toulouse's Young-Ho Eom. 
 
 Number two is Michael Jackson, and number three is Pope Pius XII. 
 
 Eom arrived at this somewhat surprising conclusion by using methods borrowed from Google to analyse Wikipedia pages and determine which individuals have the most important articles linking to them. 
 
 Taking all 24 major language editions of Wikipedia into account, Eom's team carried out the same study and came to a more plausible conclusion: Adolf Hitler. (Even then, Michael Jackson takes the second slot, and Madonna is in third place.) 
 
 The point of the study wasn't strictly to determine who the most important people are on Wikipedia, but instead to discover if the online encyclopaedia was skewed in the level of attention it gives to various figures, either by gender, time, or location. 
 
 "Our analysis shows that most important historical ﬁgures across Wikipedia language editions are born in western countries after the 17th century, and are male," the authors write. But, they add, "each Wikipedia edition highlights local figures, so that most of its own historical figures are born in the countries which use the language of the edition. The emergence of such pronounced accent to local figures seems to be natural since there are more links and interactions within one culture." 
 
 The study takes as its starting point Google's PageRank algorithm. This is still the basic method the search engine uses to decide the basic importance of webpages in its index, although the system has received an almost total overhaul since it was first introduced in 1998. 
 
 PageRank says that a page is important if a lot of important pages link to it. While the definition sounds self-referential, in practice, it recreates a lot of features which we intuitively understand: the more sites link to a newspaper's website, for instance, the more important that website is; and being linked to from a national newspaper probably says more about a site's importance than being linked to from a nondescript blog. 
 
 But when the study applied PageRank to figures on Wikipedia, the results were odd. The most important person in the world comes out as Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish naturalist – certainly an important feature in natural history, but possibly not the most important in the world. 
 
 It seems the algorithm was thrown by a quirk of Wikipedia: the site contains an almost complete collection of named species – as well as who named them. Since Linnaeus' life work was coming up with a system to classify organisms, and applying that system as widely as possible, he is linked to from a lot of pages, and important ones at that. From the Domestic Cat to the Red Fox, through the mighty Asian elephant and the lowly moss gall, Linnaeus named, and is linked from, them all. 
 
 To get around that issue, the researchers applied a second way of measuring importance: CheiRank. Simply put, "the PageRank… of an article is proportional to the number of incoming links, while the CheiRank… of an article is proportional to the number of outgoing links. Thus a top PageRank article is important since other articles refer to it, while a top CheiRank article is highly connected because it refers to other articles." In other words, an important person is likely to have a lot of other important people and things involved in their lives. 
 
 Mix Pagerank and CheiRank together, and you get the final measure: 2DRank. That's how the authors arrived at the top 100 for all 24 editions of Wikipedia – and how Frank Sinatra took pole position. 
 
 • Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales: 'It's true, I'm not a billionaire. So?' ||||| Even Sir Isaac Newton recognized that intellectual success depended on what had come before: "If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants,” he so famously said. But while we may all wield influence in our own domains, some people (say, the ones who inspired Newton) are just more influential than others. 
 
 In an intriguing new study, a team led by University of Tolouse researcher Young-Ho Eom sought to figure out who, exactly, should be considered the most influential thinker in the world. Trawling through 24 different language editions of Wikipedia, Eom's team calculated whose intellectual fingers stretched out the furthest. The goal was to study who was at the heart of the biggest branching web of links, the page of the person who, if you spent long enough link jumping through Wikipedia's nearly endless treasures, you'd end up on the most. 
 
 The result was... somewhat surprising. According to Eom and co., the world's most influential mind was Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. Linneaus beat out everyone, from the Pope to President Obama to Frank Sinatra, Hitler, Caesar—even Jesus. 
 
 If it's been a while since introductory biology, you may be scratching your head trying to remember who Carl Linnaeus even is. "The Father of Taxonomy," Linneaus invented the scientific system of naming that is still, generally, in use today. It's under Linnaeus' system that human beings became Homo sapiens, and taxonomical gifts like Llama glama, Vini vidivici, Apopyllus now and Ytu brutus came to be. 
 
 It was Linnaeus' particular scientific penchant, combined with the specifics of Young-Ho Eom's method of searching Wikipedia, says New Scientist, that led to the unexpected result: “Linnaeus topped the chart across all languages because there are so many Wikipedia pages with scientific names in every edition, and they all eventually lead back to him.” 
 
 This isn't the first time people have tried to figure out the influence of various historical people, of course, and Linnaeus is not a reliable entrant on the list. Last year Jasleen Kaur, Filippo Radicchi and Filippo Menczer tried to calculate which academic has had the most influence over the years. Using their approach, which studied how often academics referenced each other in their own work, the team found that Karl Marx was history's most influential scholar. ||||| 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
– Using methods borrowed from Google, a group of researchers has analyzed all Wikipedia pages and determined that, at least on the English language version of the site, Frank Sinatra is the world's most important person. Second place goes to Michael Jackson, and third to Pope Pius XII. When factoring in all 24 language editions of the online encyclopedia, the team found that Adolf Hitler ranked the most important person, while Michael Jackson was again second and Madonna third, reports the Guardian. "Our analysis shows that most important historical figures across Wikipedia language editions are born in western countries after the 17th century, and are male," the authors write. The researchers combined two algorithms to reach these conclusions. First, Google's PageRank algorithm, which determines a page's importance based on how many other pages link to it. In using PageRank on Wikipedia, the most important person in the world was 18th-century Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, likely because the pages of organism after organism link back to the "father of taxonomy." So the researchers added an algorithm called CheiRank, which determines importance based on the number of outgoing links, the thought being that an important person would himself be connected to other important people, things, and events. Using the two together—an approach they dubbed 2DRank—no one beat out Frank Sinatra on English pages or Adolf Hitler across all language versions. Last year, in a separate study analyzing academic references, one team deemed Karl Marx to be the world's most important scholar, according to the Smithsonian. (Click to read about one of Sinatra's quirks.)