"Google is losing one of its main sources of information for its Knowledge Graph, the CIA World Factbook. This was a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency between 1962 and 2026 with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. Glenn Gabe posted about this on X, and noted that The CIA World Factbook is sunsetting. On February 4, 2026, the CIA announced that The World Factbook was discontinued."
"And the process has begun, as Glenn wrote, "There are over 7K urls indexed there (for now), but they all redirect to a message about The Factbook shutting down. There are close to 700K inbound links from 20K referring sites. Anyway, it's the end of an era." Google points to this resouce as one of the top three sources it uses over here. "Google's Knowledge Graph isn't just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook," Google wrote."
The CIA World Factbook operated from 1962 until its discontinuation on February 4, 2026, providing almanac-style country information. Over 7,000 Factbook URLs remain indexed but redirect to a shutdown notice, and the site has nearly 700,000 inbound links from about 20,000 referring domains. The Factbook was one of the primary public sources for Google's Knowledge Graph early on, alongside Freebase and Wikipedia. Many Factbook pages are now dropping out of search results, producing measurable declines in search visibility. Google likely has much of the Factbook content archived internally, but the shutdown introduces uncertainty about future Knowledge Graph sourcing and citation.
Read at Search Engine Roundtable
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