Quality / Spam Issues in Some Google Knowledge Graph results?
From my review of some Google Knowledge Graph results, there appear to be some spam & quality issues in some "best"-type list results listed as "from sources around the web". These list results appear to be aggregations of other lists online (which sometimes rank well too below the Graph results for the search phrases in question from what I'm seeing) and the 3rd party lists used can be seen in the citations when you expand the result in question. To give you an idea (if you're not familiar with) what they look like - see an example Knowledge Graph result below :
For example, in the Knowledge Graph citations for an agency listed 1st in a list of "top [redacted] agencies" (Google has rewritten the query) displayed for the query "global [redacted] agency" the first citation in the expanded result is from a list of "Top [redacted] Agencies..." on the same agency's own website where they rank themselves first in a list - hardly an impartial nor authoritative review! This should be easy to filter out. This must be a loophole in the Knowledge Graph algo...
See below:
I also previously saw a blog on a major blog host site with a similar list to the aforementioned agency's website list cited as a source in these results with hundreds of what appear to be paid links to the blog page alone . Again the same agency website ranks 1st in this blog's list - this blog would appear to have been created by the agency in question - the major clue the blog is linked to from their own site...
There are also issues with other lists in these results: e.g.
no rating / review content (or results not displayed by combination of average review rating / number of ratings in a sensible order)
sponsored / paid listings without full clear (legally required) disclosure (sometimes this appears to be the case from reviewing UTM codes used in the listings)
I also note paid links to multiple websites listed as citations in these results.
etc.
I've seen citations used from around 6 websites whose lists do not appear to be "helpful, reliable, people-first content": but this content appears to be cited (and the lists themselves also rank below the Knowledge Graph) it would appear to due to the backlinks the listing websites in question have as well as their relevance to the search term. I've seen blog and Linkedin content used as citations. As for the power of these citations see below:
A citation in just one of these low quality lists (for a company with a website with just 12 dofollow linking domains according to Ahrefs) appears to be giving a position of 7th out of 9 in Knowledge Graph results displayed for "Top [redacted] companies in the world" (a phrase with 170 monthly search volume on Google USA) from the search location of LA, USA. 😭
Facts are a part of Google's Knowledge Graph - results listed as "from sources around the web" (like other info from sources around the web) are not always factual and thus can be low quality and manipulated by spammers...
I also note erroneous citations (and their snippets displayed) in some other Knowledge Graph results e.g. for Revive Digital on clutch. co for the search "popular digital marketing agencies" - Revive Digital are listed on this site with an 5/5 average review rating from 4 reviews which does not make them stand out in clutch. co listings (as highest rated by avg. number of reviews / rating) and the snippet is for another agency (Ignite Digital). As to the quality of Clutch listings it appears the first page results for some lists all listings are sponsored / featured (paid) listings by default. There are 880 searches for the phrase searched for below according to Google Keyword Planner (appears to be an aggregated volume for phrases including "best digital marketing agencies").
