Marketing with Google Knol

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Google just released Knol - and the pundits are touting it as a wikipedia killer already. So what is Knol and should you pay attention to it?

What is Knol?

Knol is a Google project where users write authoritative articles on specific subjects and publish them at knol.google.com

Its not like wikipedia.com because:

1. Its not completely open source. Others can’t edit the articles you publish without your consent. So in that way, its more like squidoo.com than wikipedia.com

2.  The article URLs are in the format of
http://www.knol.google.com/k/[username]/[article-title]

So it seems like more than one person can write an authoritative article on the same topic - unlike on wikipedia.

So Should You Pay Attention to Knol?

One word answer: Yes.

Although historically, Google hasn’t given a lot of weight to pages created by others on the Google network (eg: on GooglePages and Blogger) - it seems like they have changed tracks for their Knol project.

More than half of the Featured Knols rank in the first page of Google for their titles!

• How to Backpack - Google Rank #4
• Tooth Pain - Google Rank #3
• Toilet Clogs - Google Rank #4

The other un-featured Knols aren’t doing too good at the moment.  But seems like that will change soon.

On top of that, Google also shares Adsense revenue that are shown on your Knols pages.

So my prediction is that the Squidoo.com lens writers are going to jump on the Knol bandwagon in droves!  I personaly will be creating new Knol pages before creating Squidoo Lenses too (but I’m not totally giving up on Squidoo just yet).

Action Summary:

• Create your own knol for your blog
• But don’t try to make it an ad for your blog. Follow Google’s Good Knol Writing guidelines
• Reference other sites and links within your knol. Write your Knol like you are writing an article for a science journal
• Because the goal is to become one of the Google’s Featured Knol and enjoy a lot of traffic to your blog through the knol

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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 24 Jul 2008

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