James Dooley: Google knowledge panels—getting yourself that KGM ID (also known as a Knowledge Graph Machine ID) and why it matters. Today I’m joined by Dennis Yu, who’s an absolute legend when it comes to knowledge panels. Dennis, before we get into how to trigger one and go deeper—is it important to have a knowledge panel, and why?

Dennis Yu: It is if people are going to Google your name, your company’s products, your company, and you want to dominate the search results with those colored boxes. If you want to win in AI search and have featured snippets show up, then yes. If you’re trying to be invisible, then it doesn’t matter. But if you’re a public figure—if you’re an entrepreneur—then by definition you’re a public figure, and it’s important.

James Dooley: So anyone saying, “I want to be seen in AI, I want to grow my business, I want me as the founder attached to a successful business I’m proud of,” but they don’t have a knowledge panel—what are the first steps to start working toward getting a KGM ID?

Dennis Yu: Use Google’s tool. You don’t need anyone else’s. Look yourself up. We built a tool too, just to show how many other James Dooleys there are to see what competition looks like. Usually you’ll see other people—maybe you’ll be unlucky and there’s an athlete or a porn star with the same name—but even then you can still get your knowledge panel.
You have to decide: What am I really known for? What have I achieved? What am I notable for? Not “Wikipedia notable,” but are there citations and facts—not from your website, not from your social media—that credibly show you’re worth listening to about a topic or a result you achieved? That should tie to your why—why you started your business, your expertise. Most people don’t have the footprint: they don’t have all the social media, they don’t have a personal brand site, they don’t have schema on the company site and personal site, and they mix their company “About” with their personal “About.” That creates confusion—disambiguation issues. If you get that basic layer sorted—schema (WordPress takes care of half of it), then get on other people’s podcasts, interview people who are notable in the area you want to be known for. Each podcast becomes a chapter in a book. Use AI to turn it into a book, put it on Amazon, have print and Kindle copies, run a dollar-a-day against it, make it a bestseller, screenshot it. Repurpose the podcast to YouTube. Now you’ve got a virtuous circle—Google sees corroboration across platforms.

James Dooley: You mentioned disambiguation. For anyone listening who isn’t familiar, can you explain what disambiguation means—especially with different people having the same name?

Dennis Yu: You want to show you’re distinct. If there’s John Smith and John Smith, how do we know it’s the same one? If it’s a business—ABC Plumbing—how many ABC Plumbings are there? That’s where you go down to name, address, phone and the entities attached to that person or company.
Think about the entity—how clear is it? An entity can be a person, place, company. For a person like James Dooley, what are the facts? Date of birth, relatives, books written, companies involved in, achievements—what would Detective Google find? People structure pages wrong, don’t have a personal brand site, and create confusion.
So disambiguation is a fancy way of saying: reduce confusion so Google has clarity on each entity and how entities connect. If the structure is set up properly—including social profiles tied to the right name—Google becomes confident: “Yes, this is James Dooley.”

James Dooley: That leads into entity connections. You mentioned a personal brand website—like jamesdooley.com—some people call it an entity hub. So: personal site, schema, “sameAs” linking to social profiles, and the dollar-a-day amplification strategy. But you also mentioned podcasts.
If you’re on this podcast now, would you create a dedicated page on your entity hub for this episode and wrap it in schema—or keep one page listing all podcast appearances?

Dennis Yu: You’ve been listening to Jason Barnard—because he’d say one page per item, all linked. In an ideal world, yes. But practically: if you have a relationship and proof—like multiple podcast episodes—distributed on blog posts and YouTube, with embeds and schema to identify the objects on the page, that’s enough. Prioritise the top two or three topics you want to be known for and the top two or three people you want to be associated with. Then create long-form content like a podcast episode.
I like podcasts because a 45-minute episode is the easiest way to capture a lot of content once, then repurpose it 100 ways—clips, articles, book chapters, social edits. That helps both sides: your content shows up in their knowledge panel and vice versa. My favorite part of knowledge panels isn’t just Googling my name—it’s when you look up someone like Neil Patel and it says “People also search for Dennis Yu.” That happens when you’re connected: you speak together, reference them (not annoyingly), share proof like a photo together. It’s not just for Google—it shows the audience you’re credible.

James Dooley: So is “People also search for” mainly driven by connections and overlap—people consuming both of your content?

Dennis Yu: Exactly. Think of a Venn diagram—people consuming Neil Patel’s content and people consuming mine, and the overlap. Google looks at that, similar to how YouTube recommends. The intersection of people + topics is the sweet spot. Do a podcast with a couple of those people and you hit the bullseye.

James Dooley: Does ranking in Google Images impact knowledge panels?

Dennis Yu: It does. And when you have video or podcast content, you can pull images out of it. Once you have a knowledge panel, you can also suggest edits—choose photos, correct info. More commonly, people get duplicate knowledge panels and try to merge them—consolidation and disambiguation.

James Dooley: What about Google Scholar?

Dennis Yu: Great for academic publications. That carries more weight—like an edu link vs a .com link. Self-publishing on Amazon isn’t the same, but both help.

James Dooley: Do you publish books on Google Books too? It often becomes a bio source in knowledge panels.

Dennis Yu: Ideally, publish everywhere. You’d expect Google to be biased toward Google sources like YouTube, Maps, Google Books.

James Dooley: On “bestseller”—how do you engineer that? Is it the dollar-a-day strategy?

Dennis Yu: Yes. Interview notable people, turn it into a book with AI, publish to Amazon. Interview 10 people, send them the book—now they’re co-authors. They share it: “I’m in James Dooley’s book, chapter three.” That creates third-party signals tied to your entity. Then run dollar-a-day ads on Amazon—maybe $5/day for a short run. Choose categories. It’s surprisingly easy to become a bestseller in a narrow category. Screenshot it—Google can see it. Reviews and traffic are behavioral signals.

James Dooley: Any advice on choosing categories?

Dennis Yu: Go niche. I know Jabez Labret—he became a bestseller in digital marketing for lawyers by selling only a handful of copies because there weren’t many books in that category. Another example: Danny Liebbrandt chose SEO for pest control companies and became a celebrity in that world—podcasts, conferences, book, giveaways, photos, autographs—then ads, free-plus-shipping, courses, coaching. It compounds.

James Dooley: If someone is doing all of that—books, videos, dollar-a-day—yet there are multiple strong people with the same name (like a porn star and athlete), and they’re not showing—what trusted third-party sources can help beyond “go get Wikipedia”?

Dennis Yu: Cross-publish the book on free-ebooks.net—it’s been around forever, DR 75, big organic traffic. But also: context matters. If the “other Dennis Yu” is in a different country or topic, Google is smart enough to show you when there’s business value. You don’t need to rank everywhere all the time—you need to show up where it matters for your audience.

James Dooley: I’ve seen you mention free-ebooks before—if you’ve got a video on that, send it over and I’ll link it.

Dennis Yu: I’ll do this for you, James. You’ve got tons of podcast episodes. Package them into a book with our guidelines. I’m the publisher—I'll publish it, feature it, and link to you from many places. You couldn’t even buy links of that quality.

James Dooley: Love that. Last year I published eight books—Amazon and Google Books—and I did something similar: I got 47 SEO influencers to write chapters, bought copies, gave them out at events. Incredible exposure, but painful to edit—some sent AI fluff and it became hard work.
This year I’m going aggressive on podcasting—I’ve launched eight podcast series and I’m going hard on the circuit. We can talk off-air, but can existing books be syndicated to free-ebooks?

Dennis Yu: I prefer starting with real podcast content—real conversations—because I assume submissions are AI until proven otherwise. I want to prove it’s real: face-to-face, live stream it, record a bunch at once. I’ll fly to Manchester later this year—we’ll do it properly.

James Dooley: Let’s do it. We can even make a playlist showing what we did and why.
Before we wrap—anything else people should know as a key takeaway to improve knowledge panels and KGM IDs?

Dennis Yu: If you podcast with other people who already have authority and knowledge panels, you enhance theirs by interviewing them. And by associating with them, when people look them up, it might show you. The best way to build your knowledge panel is to honor other people in your industry—even competitors.

James Dooley: Incredible advice. Dennis, it’s been a pleasure. If anyone wants more on knowledge panels, comment below—Dennis has agreed to do more videos on whatever you’re struggling with: triggering a KGM ID, strengthening an existing panel, and more. Dennis is a former search engineer and knows the ins and outs. Make sure you like and drop a comment. Dennis, absolute pleasure.

Dennis Yu: Thank you, James.