Fun With Google Search

What's Michelle Williams's Bacon number, you ask? It's two and no — that's not the number of bacon strips she had to eat this morning; it's the degree of separation between Kevin Bacon and the award-winning actress, aka her Bacon number. Now it's readily available on the Internet, thanks to the Google Knowledge Graph.

The project is part of the search giant's effort to make online discovery more intelligent and informative (plus a bit more fun, we'd say!). To account for something like the Bacon number, Google looks at relationships not just between search terms, but also between real people, places, and events.

Read more about Michelle and the Google Knowledge Graph after the jump.

For example, if you search "Michelle Williams," Google knows that there is not one but two women you may be looking for: the aforementioned leading lady and the underappreciated Destiny's Child songstress. Google now makes it easy to switch between the two and provides more details about their family, background, and the movies or music they've produced — shown right on the search page in widgets powered by the Google Knowledge Graph. Things that you would find on IMDB, Wikipedia, or CIA World Factbook are now built into Google Search as well.

Do you find the Google Knowledge Graph helpful or an unnecessary gimmick?