When I received a CNN alert in my inbox saying simply this:

“Google announces big change to how search results are delivered, says new search tool will think more like a human.”

I promptly turned to my right to ask our SEO expert George what it all means.

He responded with this article from Search Engine Land. My eyes almost immediately glazed over. “But it’s soooo lonnnng!” I bemoaned. (No offense Search Engine Land – good stuff, really!)

In a nutshell, this is what I can tell is going on. Google’s new “Knowledge Graph,” has been being murmured about for a few months and today the big news is that it’s been officially launched. The deal is that it will allow Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match terms, but for concepts that the words describe, as Search Engine Land put it, and to help you get your search results faster. When you now search for a popular or well-known person, place or thing, you’ll get a box to the right of the results explaining more about your search term.

For instance, as this ABC News article explains, search for “Frank Lloyd Wright” today and the first link might be to Wikipedia. But now, to the right of that result you’ll see some of that Wikipedia or other sourced information right on the search page, including a short summary. You’ll also get related searches.The term graph is being used because it’s describing how Google is building relationships between people, places and things and reporting facts about these entities.

If you’re an SEO/SEM pro at a retail company and you really want to dig deeper into this new Google launch, by all means check out the Search Engine Land article, or this ABC News article.

I’m just curious to know what you all think about the announcement and how it will change your business…?