Google Knol: Implications for SEO - Competing? Who, Me?
(Page 2 of 4 )
It’s worth pointing out, before I go any further, that it is by no means certain that Google will go any further with this project. Google Labs always seems to be bubbling with something new, but the creative folks at the Googleplex come up with far more ideas that never see the light of the Internet. And even if it does open to the world, there’s no guarantee it will be successful. For every Google Earth, there are several projects like Google Base.
That said, why did Google announce that they were working on this project in private beta? TechCrunch notes that the timing of the announcement coincided with the launch of Wikia Search, the open source search engine being built by the for-profit arm of the same company that brought you Wikipedia. It’s an amusing irony – or perhaps TechCrunch has it right, that it’s “a reminder to Wikipedia that competition can flow both ways.”
Wikipedia’s results frequently appear near the top of Google for just about any search term you’d care to use. And Wikipedia absolutely refuses to put any ads on its pages. Google would love to have that kind of inventory on which to place ads. In the Google blog post, Manber pointed out that “A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic will want to read.” That’s the way Wikipedia tends to position its articles – and it’s also a prime venue for ads. Who wouldn’t want to get the first ads someone sees on a topic?
Of course, Google Knol faces direct competition from more than just Wikipedia. There’s Citizendium, with less than 50 approved articles at the time of writing. There’s Mahalo, whose dedicated human editors keep building interesting pages that look more and more “complete” every time I stop by the site. There’s Everything2, though their content typically isn’t anything to write home about. There’s Squidoo, which I’d say more about if they weren’t suffering from technical difficulties as I was writing this article.
And if you want to get really old school, there’s About.com. That site’s idea of guides that maintain an area for a particular topic isn’t all that far off from Google’s idea of a knol. Site guides even typically write at least one introductory article on the topic, to help explain it to new visitors. So what is special about a knol?
Next: A Close Look at an Example Knol >>
More Search Engine News Articles
More By Terri Wells
