Ask HN: How do you change misleading Knowledge Graph information with Google? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you change misleading Knowledge Graph information with Google?

33 pointsdarrenlamb14 comments

I work for a college who operates several campuses across the city. Each campus has been verified with Google My Business and lists the correct contact information for that given campus. Within the past two months, one of our satellite campuses has been the one appearing in the Knowledge Graph box instead of our main campus when searching for our college. This has negatively impacted our prospective students since when they search for our school, the map and phone number come up for our small satellite campus.

I've tried using the "feedback" link on the Knowledge Graph box and contacting Google My Business reps but to no avail. Can anybody shed light on how I can get the Knowledge Graph box information changed to point at our main campus? Thanks!

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The feedback button will work, but it's best if you organize and consorted effort. Get as many people as you can to do it, and give constructive feedback.

Thanks for the advice. I guess we'll have to do a bit of a feedback blitz. Do you have any idea of how long it takes for the changes to be implemented?

Highly varies depending on severity.

First question needed for potential resolution: Is your campus still the first search result?

Our website is the first result, but the Google+ page for the satellite campus is the fourth result – our other campuses Google+ pages don't even show up in the first few pages of the search results.

What you should do then, (and I don't know that this will work), is to suggest your organization data using the Schema.org code; and specify your main campuses Google+ (verified business) page in the sameAs.

You can read more about doing that at https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/soci...

While I can't guarantee or even believe whole heartedly it'll work, it will at least suggest to the google crawler what the true information should be.

It may also be helpful to embed corporate contact information using a similar process: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/cont...

Are you willing to reveal the campus just so that I can see or no because privacy concerns?

That's fantastic advice and well worth a shot! The school is Red River College, yet when you search for that, you get the information for Red River College - Stevenson Campus (our small satellite campus).

You will need about 20 - 30 unique people to provide feedback before Google will notice and take action. The knowledge graph is meant to work organically so its best to look at the source data and fix there first. I also wonder since i'm in L.A., I wonder if the Stevenson Campus is the closest to me...

I would recommend using URL rewriting this - http://www.rrc.ca/index.php?pid=5841 to http://www.rrc.ca/contact and mark it up with http://schema.org/Organization

You may even want to try dedicating pages to each campus with its corresponding contact information. I also notice there is a different domain for Robin Center - http://www.rrc.mb.ca/ it looks like the same info as rrc.ca.

You should also request a Google+ Page name like +RedRiverCollege https://plus.google.com/111245383000211941914/videos

I found an incorrect/incomplete Knowledge Graph entry for a dictionary definition once, and there was no Feedback option even available for it.

Probably best to move your main campus to the location indicated. Google only employs the Brightest People, so the mistake is more likely to be yours than theirs. Also, the fact that there is no 'customer service' contact to be found on their pages is not an oversight.

I've gone through the Maps error reporting before with mixed results.

I've tried that too... The problem is that this satellite campus is a legitimate location, it's just not the campus that should be showing up as our main location.

Which campus should show up as the main one? Notre Dame? I looked at the website and Wikipedia, and I can't figure out if Notre Dame, Exchange District, or Downtown is the campus that should be returned. (This isn't a rhetorical question - I'd like to know the answer.)

You're right, the Notre Dame location is our main campus.

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