Ever wonder how Google chooses which companies show a knowledge panel on the right hand side of the search results while others don’t?  This question came up in the last Google Webmaster Hangout from someone who has done all the “right steps” in order to have a knowledge panel show up, but hasn’t had any luck with it actually showing.

What I have to do, to show up my company informations from Wikipedia in knowledge graph sitebar on brand search queries ? I already added informations to Wikidata and Freebase. What else is required?

Here is what John Mueller from Google had to say:

Essentially we pick up this information from various sources like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Freebase and our algorithms then try and figure out whether or not it makes sense to show that information.  And sometimes this is not really a technical decision in that since our algorithms might look at this and it probably doesn’t make sense to show something specific from Wikipedia in the sidebar here.

Or sometimes it might make sense to show something but we don’t have that much information so we can’t show anything.

So I think by going through and making sure that the base information is available, you’re doing the right thing there and the rest is not really something that depends on technical issues but rather on how we think this content might match what a user might be looking for.

So while users definitely have more control in things like featured snippets, when it comes to knowledge panel, there is no guarantee it will be displayed.  That said, it is always best to do all you can to have the relevant data in sites such as Wikipedia, so if Google’s algos decide that your company or brand should have a knowledge panel, that they have the data available to display.