[sullivandanny]

I work for Google Search. Knowledge panels are automatically created and generated. And it is possible that if we have two people of the same name, our systems might select an incorrect photo. My apologies for the concern this has caused you. I'll share more about how you can better get this feedback to us.

We allow for knowledge panels to be claimed. I checked, and yours isn't. This explains more how to do that: https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534902

When a panel is claimed, then when we get feedback about change requests or possible issues, we know they are coming from a verified source and can work better to resolve the issues. This explains more about that process: https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534842

Normally people just don't like the image we show, so we have a mechanism for them to upload a preferred image. That's very easy to use. But in your case, I understand your reasons for not wanting to have an image used at all. I believe if you had filed feedback explaining that, the image would have been removed.

I'll check on this further, but right now, I see that no image is being shown at all. So I suspect that we've gotten the feedback here somehow and taken action to block any image from showing at all. But again, I'll check on this.

[AndreaVass]

Your comment was brought to my attention last night. I had not seen it before nor had the time to read through all of these comments.

Are you suggesting that I did not send feedback through the appropriate channels? I have dozens of email exchanges with Google, some of which have multiple people copied on them, and I have screenshots of me sending feedback through your feedback link located within the knowledge panel. (And I explained my situation to them with more detail than I have explained here.)

In April and May, I received email responses from Google employees who work for the knowledge panel support team. After they changed the photo twice to images of the wrong women instead of deleting them, I continued complaining and they suggested I contact legal removals. When I contacted legal, I received automated responses to contact the knowledge support team. So I was bounced around.

They then began ignoring me and I started receiving automated responses from everyone. Even though I was being ignored, on any given day, I would wake up and find a different photo presented alongside my book.

I also reached out to you, Danny Sullivan, directly. Glad you and Google decided to acknowledge me and fix it once it was brought to the public’s attention and the public seemed to care. I appreciate that and I hope it stays fixed. I hope for others sake you will get rid of the knowledge panel until it’s working correctly.

[somethingor]

> I believe if you had filed feedback explaining that, the image would have been removed.

I believe you’re wrong about that

[zepearl]

Happy to read about your efforts trying to investigate the issue :)

Personally, I think that there are 2 separate issues: displaying/generating such a panel (including a pic) + the correctness of the informations displayed/generated.

Maybe knowledge panels should just not be generated for sensitive topics (e.g. identify "sensitive material" through keywords?) as in that context the potential for mistakes and/or subjective opinions can be quite high. Or maybe panels containing potential sensitive material should be checked manually before being published and references to the sources of the text/pics should be shown clearly (e.g. like Wikipedia does).

In general, it's absolutely too easy to require the affected people to react & try to get things fixed - people might even be completely unaware of "bad" things being shown about them on Google, they might just feel the after-effect of that. The mistake(s) in this case originated apparently at Google, the user had apparently no involvement with the generation of wrong informations, Google must fix it.

Cheers :)

[zibzab]

> Maybe knowledge panels should just not be generated for sensitive topics

Knowledge panels shouldn't be generated for people period.

Wondering how many job applications have been thrown out due to the Knowledge panel pictures, without the person involved ever realising..

[CRConrad]

> But in your case, I understand your reasons for not wanting to have an image used at all. I believe if you had filed feedback explaining that, the image would have been removed.

So, you're claiming they didn't say they didn't want a picture? Have you read their correspondence with Google on the matter, or how do you know this?

[el-salvador]

Hi! This may be off topic. There is a bug in Google Search for El Salvador for quite a while.

Every search query related to prices/curtency are shown with the wrong local currency.

For example, this query, using a Salvadoran IP address:

https://www.google.com/search?q=precio+bitcoin

Will show bitcoin price in SVC (Salvadoran Colon), the former currency that was phased out in 2001. The current currency in El Salvador is USD, so prices should be show in US Dollars.