Knowledge Panel

A knowledge panel is the box a search engine shows beside or above its results when it is confident the query names one specific entity. It is assembled from the engine’s knowledge graph: a name, a description, an image, a few facts and links to the entity’s profiles elsewhere.

Where the contents come from

The panel is not written by its subject. It is rendered from the entity record, which is why its fields match what Google’s Knowledge Graph Search API returns for an entity: name, description, image, detailed information and a schema.org type. What the business controls is the evidence the record was built from, its own pages and profiles, and how consistently they agree. For a local business the box Google shows beside a branded search is usually its business listing, which the owner manages directly, rather than a Knowledge Graph panel; the two look alike and are filled differently.

The panel’s equivalent in a generated answer

A panel appears when the engine has resolved a query to one entity. An assistant’s answer to a buyer’s question performs the same act for several entities at once: it names a few businesses and leaves the rest out. That is the surface this site measures. On a one-question probe of 9,240 small businesses in September 2026, put to Claude with web retrieval, 14.9% were named; among the 5,928 answers that gave a clearly differentiated list rather than a hedge, 17.7%. That is a Claude figure from one question per business on one day, directional rather than a rate, and it is written up in what 9,483 small business websites serve to an AI crawler. The businesses that were named were, on inspection, the ones whose sites stated a consistent identity, which is the same property a panel is built from.

A common question

Can a business write the text that appears in its own knowledge panel?

No. The box is rendered from the engine's entity record, carrying the fields that record holds: a name, a description, an image, further detail and a schema.org type. What the subject controls is the evidence behind that record, its own pages and profiles and how well they agree with each other. One exception is worth knowing: beside a branded search, a local business usually sees its own business listing, which the owner does manage directly, and which only looks like a knowledge panel.

Sources

Google, Knowledge Graph Search API, for the fields an entity record carries. The probe figures are this site’s own; one assistant, one question per business, sample drawn per metro and trade.