What is hume.google.com and why is it in my referrers?

This one crops up from time-to-time for me, and as I frequently ask myself questions, this post lays a digital trail for me to come back to in future.

Plus, as a bonus, I’ve asked the question of someone who might know, so I can update this post in future, too…

I saw someone hop onto a domain from the referring URL hume.google.com and wondered – not for the first time – what this might be.

A quick online search suggests that this is where Google manages it’s “knowledge graph” data about… well everything. What’s knowledge graph? Well, the boxes you see at the right hand side when you search contain information collated about the subject of your search – for example, if you search for a place, there will be a description, often of tourist-y things about that place, with the source listed as “Google” – this is their knowledge graph at play.

So – and the old internet research suggests NDAs may have been imposed on those who can help – we can assume a referral from hume.google.com is maybe someone in Google researching a subject, or perhaps a link from in a knowledge graph itself. Either way, I’ve asked someone at Google with the below Tweet to the ever-friendly @JohnMu:

https://twitter.com/robinjescott/status/1336030045849214985

I will keep you posted if there is any reply. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment, below, if you’ve got more concrete evidence to go on than some old Reddit post from 2015 🙂

Leave a comment