Twenty percent of Google search results for trending keywords are either outdated or a mismatch. This has been the result of the research held by Conductor, a SEO firm; the study also found out whether there were mismatches or a delayed distribution in knowledge graph entities in comparison to Wikipedia’s search results. They selected 50 most popular people in Google insights and trends as trending keywords and made 50 keywords lists to show “normal” and popular topics. The results of this research showed that the differences between Wikipedia and Google results are: 20% if one searches for Google trends and insights, 4% difference if one searches for celebrities and a combined search will give 12% differences. The research found that highly active searches are most likely to have very quickly updating Wikipedia pages and mismatching Google knowledge graph entities. One in every five of these popular searches has outdated results.

There have been many arguments as to whether Wikipedia itself is a trustworthy source of information, especially for educational purposes. Google knowledge conveniently shows Wiki results on its page so that users will not have to open Wikipedia to see them; this means that all the things users want to look for in Wikipedia  can be easily found in Google. On the other hand there is a risk of finding outdated information or mismatching information because Wiki entries were updated as opposed to their corresponding Google Knowledge Graph entries which have not yet been updated. This is because Google takes 2-4 days to update Wikipedia entries on their Google knowledge graph, this doesn’t mean that Google might be wrong but they just have old information.

The research team from Conductor noted that while a real-time update of all Wikipedia information on the Google knowledge page will be impossible, it is still important that they do better than the 4 day delay shown in many of their mismatching keywords. In addition, users should keep in mind that it’s their duty and responsibility to verify all information obtained from the Internet even if it’s written on Google’s front pages.

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