Google Knol Takes Aim at Wikipedia, Others - Does Knol Encourage Content Theft?
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Aaron Wall noticed the results of Danny Sullivan's test, and some other peculiar items. He decided another test of Knol was in order. He wanted to see how Google would handle a knol if it was duplicate content of something promoted somewhere else online. And he had some ready made content to do that with – his own guide to learning SEO, which was also syndicated to Business.com.
The Business.com page with Wall's content has a PageRank of 5. But after Wall built his knol and searched for a string that was on both the Business.com page and the knol, guess which one ranks higher? If you guessed that the knol did, then not only are you right, but you probably understand why Wall is so concerned.
“Some might call this the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm, but one might equally decide to call it the copyright work deserves to be stolen algorithm,” Wall notes (emphasis in original). Google clearly knows that the knol is duplicate content, but they still ranked it higher than the much older content from a reputable site.
So take this one step further. Say someone writes a knol using your content and manages to get a few decent links to it. Even if your site is an authority site, you could find yourself slipping down the SERPs. That could cost you traffic, and by extension, money. If you make your living by publishing copyrighted content to the Internet, it's enough to make your blood boil. Sure, Google's approach might take down Wikipedia as an authority site – but if Wall is right, it could end up tarring other authority sites with the same brush.
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