Tom Chuong, SEO

Google Launches Knol To Compete With Wikipedia

December 18, 2007 – 11:49 pm

According to Google‘s algorithm, Wikipedia is considered an authority website. Millions of people go to Wikipedia every day to search for relevant information. Argubably, Wikipedia has become an resource for non-commercialized information. Google sees the efficiency and popularity of Wikipedia and introduced Google Knol on December 13, 2007.

Knol is a unit of knowledge and it’s a free service provided by Google. Basically, it’s an article repository much like the popular ezinearticles.com that many seo experts and people uses everyday. Currently, Knol can only be accessed by invitation only. According to Google, you can simply write your article on Knol and Google will host it.

Furthermore, Google has decided not edit any of the articles. The author of the knol will have complete autonomy over the article. Essentially, the author will be the writer and editor.

From a search engine perspective, Google wants to take away the website traffic share from Wikipedia and introduce everyone to Knol. It could work well if people started finding relevants articles in Knol pertaining to their particular needs.

From a search engine perspective, seo experts could benefit enormously if they start integrating their seo campaigns with Knol when it offically launches for public use.

I’m excited about this new introduction from Google because I’m a big fan of article creation and submission. Getting into Knol early could have a huge impact for my client’s websites. Let’s wait and see.