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After we first announced Google's intention to launch Knol, their knowledgebase, we learned yesterday that the project is finally live.
Here's a small little screenshot of Google Knol:
Will it be the Wikipedia killer, a many people have been wondering since Knol was announced last year? Well, so far, Knol is extremely medicine-focused and apparently has very bad navigation, according to forum members.
Will it be useful for SEO in the long term? If those results get spidered and ranked well in Google, it will have a traffic value, most likely. But the links are nofollowed as many forum members note.
Additional discussion is on Techmeme.
Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.
Comments:
Flo
07/24/2008 05:50 pm
I don't see any nofollow tags, maybe they have been removed? What I see is that there are some pages with ugly code like it's produced by early FrontPage Versions (loads of <font> tags in there). Is it possible to write your own html for your article? That is really one negative point for knol atm. Knol looks like an article directory to me, think that is why google penalized article directories earlier this year. we will see ;)
Michael Martinez
07/24/2008 07:37 pm
This is not a wiki site (although people can make their content publicly editable). Think of it as a private publishing and document indexing service, a sort of self-building online library of knowledge. People will be vetted on the basis of their verifiable credentials (I would not recommend any resume stuffing in the personal biography pages) and the perceived quality of their contributions (articles can be rated). I think you MUST verify who you are in order to be included in the search results. I cannot bring up information on Danny Sullivan if I search for his name but searching for a keyword in the title of his article does produce a result. I contributed an article but like him was unable to verify my identity over the phone. Queries for my name and article title produce no results, although they are visible if you know the URLs. This system may actually curtail some of the random mayhem that Wikipedia suffers from but it won't deter professional content injectors from developing faux personas and such.
Pratheep
07/24/2008 08:44 pm
Name verification is currently open only to US users. why can't they open-up globally?
suzan
07/25/2008 04:27 am
we cannot bring up the information on danny.If we search for his name keyword in the title of his article does produce a result. ============================================== suzan debt consolidation <a href="http://www.mydebtconsolidation" rel="nofollow"> debt consolidation<a>
Ash
07/25/2008 10:01 pm
As the owner of a site with lots of content I'd like to share, I love the idea. However, I'm worried about duplicate content. Should everything submitted to Knol be 100% original? Thanks, Ash
Michael Martinez
07/26/2008 08:07 am
Knol is not a link-building platform. Not yet, at any rate. They want original content in the articles people write there. You should read Danny Sullivan's analyses of Knol over at SearchEngineLand before putting yourself on the "Knol will help me promote my site" treadmill. The articles I mentioned previously are now appearing in the Knol search tool but NOT in Google's Web index (I have deliberately NOT linked to my Knol contributions). I still am not verified despite having transmitted the code via phone that I was given, so non-US users should not feel too frustrated. I don't think everyone in the U.S. wants to hand Google a credit card number.