Abstract: Google’s knowledge graph technology has drawn a lot of research attentions in recent years. However, due to the limited public disclosure of technical details, people find it difficult to understand the connotation and value of this technology. In this paper, we introduce the key techniques involved in the construction of knowledge graph in a bottom-up way, starting from a clearly defined concept and a technical architecture of the knowledge graph. Firstly, we describe in detail the definition and connotation of the knowledge graph, and then we propose the technical framework for knowledge graph construction, in which the construction process is divided into three levels according to the abstract level of the input knowledge materials, including the information extraction layer, the knowledge integration layer, and the knowledge processing layer, respectively. Secondly, the research status of the key technologies for each level are surveyed comprehensively and also investigated critically for the purposes of gradually revealing the mysteries of the knowledge graph technology, the state-of-the-art progress, and its relationship with related disciplines. Finally, five major research challenges in this area are summarized, and the corresponding key research issues are highlighted.

Key words: knowledge graph, semantic Web, information retrieval, semantic search engine, natural language processing