Fatrank Podcast

James Dooley: Triggering a new knowledge panel is all the rage, and a lot of people are asking how to trigger a new knowledge panel. Today I am joined with Chris Walker, the founder of Legit, who successfully does this week in, week out. So Chris Walker, it is a pleasure having you.

I want you to jump straight in. I do not need to explain who you are and what you do personally because a lot of people watching this will know who you are. So, how would you go about triggering a new KGM ID, which stands for knowledge graph machine ID, which is then what leads on to you getting a knowledge panel?

Chris Walker: Yes. Again, thanks for having me. I think the first thing to do is just to make sure that you exist. You have to do the basic stuff. You have to have a brand website. When I say a brand website, I am going to answer this as if you are a person trying to get a knowledge panel rather than a business, because that is more where my experience is.

I think having a personal brand website helps a lot. It almost has to be your home base. Even if it is not your main business, just have one. You probably have jamesdooley.com. I have chriswalker.com or something like that. Then you have to have all of the main social profiles, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and whatever else, and then regularly post to those.

I know that sounds like day one marketing stuff, but a lot of people will try to buy some services and skip that part. So it is important to get all of that in place first. Not just to create them, but at least post to them regularly enough so they are not a ghost town. That is where I would start.

Make sure you have all of that. Have regular use of consistent photos and things like that everywhere so Google knows how to associate you with it. Basically, everything we are trying to do here is tell Google that this one person or this one site, this one entity to use the industry term, is the same thing. So we are trying to tie all that together.

So we do all that. Then there are certain sites that I have found are very effective, like Wikidata, and there are a bunch of different wiki sites. There is Wikidata, WikiAlpha and a whole bunch of those. I find that makes a really big difference and seems like Google really pulls from that when it is getting its knowledge.

Then this one is kind of a hack, but if you can get an IMDb page, that is really big for triggering a knowledge panel. There are ways to go about that. I guess I can give this away because I have it on my channel. The way I got mine was years ago, before I even knew I was going to do SEO, there was an independent film that was taking donations to help get the movie made. What they did was, if you donated $200, they would put your name in the credits as a special thanks. So I spent $200, I got my name in the credits, and years later I realised there was a category on IMDb for that.

So I went in and I put myself in as a special thanks, and it created a page for me. Then I built it out, and that was one of the big movers for my knowledge panel. So there is a little nugget. There are other ways to go about it as well.

James Dooley: To be honest with you, a little hack on that. I have now launched eight new podcast series. So this kind of podcast is going to go live, and this is also going on IMDb, which means you are then a guest on this episode. Each episode gets put onto IMDb by us, and then you get attributed to it, which comes up with all the write-up and links back to your profile.

So there is something called the Starmeter within IMDb, which strengthens your profile. So if you can get on other people’s podcasts, I have got eight of them which have launched. Last year, in 2025, I launched eight books, and then this year, in 2026, I am launching eight podcast series. One of the big parts of the podcast series is that every episode gets put on IMDb. So anyone who is a guest on any of the eight podcasts, if they have not got one already, gets an IMDb profile created like that.

Chris Walker: Yes. Now that you mention it, I have seen that. Paul Andre does that as well. So yes, definitely try to get an IMDb page. There are clearly at least three different ways to go about that. Then you just have to go through the process. It is kind of a pain. At least I found it was when trying to claim it. You have to log in somewhere specific and then claim it. I messed it up the first couple of times I did it and eventually got somebody else to do it for me. But that is kind of the whole process.

Now, as I hear myself say all that, I feel like I am underselling it. It is a lengthy process. It is not hard, but it is tedious and there are a lot of steps to it.

James Dooley: So with regards to that, obviously you have got one for Chris M. Walker, because there are loads of different Chris Walkers. So you went down that route.

Chris Walker: A funny story on that actually. I eventually wanted to do Chris Walker because that is my name. But apparently there was a one-hit wonder in the 1990s, and when you Google Chris Walker, he shows up for that. Whenever I do SEO talks at conferences and things, I always tell that joke. I actually messaged him one day and said, you have been helping make my speeches more entertaining. He replied saying that was hilarious and he was glad to help. So Chris Walker is actually very awesome.

James Dooley: Yes, that is cool. Obviously you have got it in for Chris M. Walker. With regards to what you are doing on there, you mentioned social media. Would you recommend any software? So things like n8n or Make.com. If someone did not want to be posting every single day on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on, is there any kind of setup of AI agents that people could be using to try and keep them warm, or do you not really recommend doing that?

Chris Walker: Yes, you can. I do not do that myself because I would rather have something that is at least somewhat valuable. But yes, you can automate it or just hire somebody to do it for you. I have not tried it specifically to get a knowledge panel, but I do not see why it would not work.

James Dooley: Yes. And then with regards to the core social media profiles, that is pretty much marketing 101. That is what everybody should have anyway. The only issue that I foresee is certain people might have a Facebook or Twitter that is for personal use and not business use. Then maybe they might need to create a second one which is specifically just for business.

Then obviously in the schema markup, the actual terminology for the branded profile is called the entity home. So the entity home is where you wrap the schema markup with who you are and what you do. Obviously you have done it very successfully. There are quite a few other people that have used a lot of Legit services to do it successfully.

But I have got one or two other questions with regards to Legit. Would you recommend anybody to go out and, even just from a branding and reputation management point of view, protect things like chrismwalker.tumblr.com or chrismwalker.blogspot.com and just go out and get all of the web 2.0s?

Chris Walker: Yes, absolutely. I have. I do not know how much impact it has, but there is no reason not to. It is such a simple thing that you can get done or do yourself. There is no reason not to go and own that. Again, you are just giving Google more and more information.

Our job, whether it is with a knowledge panel or SEO in general, is to make it easy for Google and the search engines, and now the LLMs, to understand things. So the more you can feed it, the easier it is for it to understand it and the more likely you are to get results. And I forgot to mention schema, by the way. That is a big one. You put that on the main site to tie in all your profiles to it and say, this is me and these are mine.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. What about press? Do you ever do anything with regards to multiple facets of you? So different versions of you. Chris Walker wins an award at Legit. Chris Walker does something else. You are winning certain awards and promoting the awards on guest posts or press releases. Is there anything in that just to make more noise about who you are and what you do?

Chris Walker: Totally. I have done tons of press releases over the years. I guess I have done them so much that it did not even occur to me that that is part of it. Whether I launch a new product or I have a new YouTube channel, sometimes you can always find an angle, and you should probably do those every 90 days as a good rule of thumb.

Some of those links will rank on their own and some of them will stick around for years. There is a Yahoo Finance result out there that I did in 2020, and it is almost 2026 as we are recording this. So yes, it is crazy how long they can stick around for.

James Dooley: Plus, not only that, anyone who is watching this and we are talking here specifically about triggering a knowledge panel, it is also part of building your own brand SERP and actual personal branding. You are controlling your reputation online. If you own all of the properties that are on there, you can then present who you are and what you do in your own terms. You can have control over it.

I think going into 2026, people need to be looking more not just at the corporate brand, but at who they are and what they do, because personal branding is huge. Like you said before, building up that community and building things up with a personal brand can help you leverage new brands that you might be investing in in two years, three years or four years’ time. There is one thing that you can never sell, and that is Chris M. Walker. You can sell Legit. You can sell your businesses, but your personal brand remains. I do not think enough people actually look to invest enough in themselves.

Chris Walker: Yes. And you can take that and then just apply it to whatever you do. The example I like to give on that is MrBeast. For years all he did was make videos and make himself famous, and now he can put his name on a chocolate bar or an energy drink or whatever, and the business takes off because he puts his face on it.

Another thing with a personal brand is that the number one direct response traffic channel that we have for Legit is my personal brand. There is no bigger axe I can swing to get quick sales and quick traffic. I cannot quantify it exactly, but I am pretty sure it is our number one traffic source. When I post on my personal Facebook, it gets a thousand times the engagement that the company Facebook page gets, because people like the face.

That was not intentional when I started doing it, but it has worked out to where that is the big lever I can pull. I can make a post and drive sales. Now, just to add to that, there is a downside. You can get too tied to your brand to where it makes it harder to sell something because it is so tied to you personally.

James Dooley: What I would say to you is that on this video we are talking about triggering knowledge panels and what some of these business owners can be doing. Let us say you are looking to sell Legit, right? And let us say you have got a two-year plan to sell Legit. Then knowing that you can trigger knowledge panels, you now could be building up your C-level staff. A new CEO could come in, a COO, a CMO, and all of them could have their profiles built up so you slowly move away from the brand and there are actually people with knowledge panels being set up.

I think this is the key part, which leads on to my last question. How important is it? Obviously you have spoken about how to trigger a knowledge panel, but how important do you think it actually is? Because obviously now we have spoken about one reason already, which is selling the business and elevating some of your staff. That allows you to move away from the business, which allows you to sell Legit, and it is not just a case of selling your soul with Legit. You can build others up. How important is it to trigger a knowledge panel for people in 2026?

Chris Walker: I think it is incredibly important, especially for a lot of my clients. I do not really do clients anymore, but I have worked with a lot of insurance agencies and wedding photographers and things like that, and I would always get the owner to get one. Some of them would fight me really hard on it because they were introverts or whatever the reason was. But it is not just SEO. It gives so much trust.

People will go and search you and work out whether you are somebody worth working with. Having it there has got to be one of the biggest conversion factors. Even if it is nonsense, because people see that as important. Even if you are not important at all, if they see that, they think it is important. There are a lot of little things like that, like YouTube play buttons and stuff like that, that make a lot of difference to people. That is social currency. So beyond just an SEO perspective, it is not that hard to do. It does take some work, but the ROI is tremendous.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. So anyone who is watching this, we hope you like the video on how to trigger a new knowledge panel. It is also known as a KGM ID, which stands for knowledge graph machine ID. Both myself and Chris Walker have managed to successfully do it.

I also believe, exactly like Chris Walker does, that it is very important if you are working with any clients to get the business owner or the CMO set up as an entity. If they do not have a KGM ID, they are not a known entity. A lot of people talk about entity SEO, but if they do not have a KGM ID, that person is not a known entity within the knowledge graph. I think that is the most important part. You have got to be connecting those nodes together and connecting those entities together. If you can be the founder of a company and the founder can have a knowledge panel and that connection, I think it becomes very important.

Oh, one more thing. If you want to get one for your company, you are going to have to get one for your founder before you do that too. So some people might say, I want one for the company, but you are going to have to get one for your founder, so you might as well do it.

Chris Walker: Yes, for sure.

James Dooley: I just think it is vitally important. I am not saying for all staff, but I think every C-level executive, so a CEO, a CMO and a COO, should have knowledge panels. I definitely think that the business can actually have two. So it can have one for the actual business, the corporate business, and then one or multiple ones for the Google Business Profile. The Google Business Profile is a different KGM ID to the actual corporate brand because it is about the location, not about the brand.

But for me, just the trust signals, even the minute you have a Google Business Profile connected to a website, the additional trust that website now gets is huge. I think it is not a question of whether you should get it. You need to get it. I think it is mandatory now. I also think this is a big reason why a lot of affiliate sites got hit with the Helpful Content Update. The affiliate site does not have a KGM ID. There is nobody behind it. Or even if they do put an author bio, that author bio is not a known person within Google. Therefore, you may as well just put Mrs Smith. It does not mean anything. Trying to get that person to have a knowledge panel and be connected to who they are and what they do, and to the brand, becomes very important.

Chris Walker: It also gives you, if you are an agency, something you can sell. You can sell just that as a service and probably charge three or four grand for it.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. Anyone who is watching this as well, with regards to selling this as a service, check out the links in the description. There are going to be some links there, the different Legit links Chris Walker has mentioned with regards to the different Wikidata setups, the press release, some of the guest posts and stuff like that. There are lots of different freelance services that you can be getting from Legit.

Chris Walker, you have done an absolutely amazing job in elevating people on there and being able to sell their services. I think it is incredible what you have done. So make sure you head over to Legit. Make sure you check the links in the description. And Chris Walker, thanks for being on.

Chris Walker: Thanks for having me.