well, blogger just launched knol. they describe differences between blogs and knols in the following quote: "Blogs are great for quickly and easily getting your latest writing out to your readers, while knols are better for when you want to write an authoritative article on a single topic. The tone is more formal, and, while it's easy to update the content and keep it fresh, knols aren't designed for continuously posting new content or threading." (blogger buzz, july 23, 2008) what do you think? will you try knolling?
Knol might just kill off a lot of blogs and websites. I'm not entirely sure I support it, because I get the feeling that Google is now competing with its partners - the web publishers. With Knol, Google has become a media company, something they used to say they would never become. It's not Wikipedia that's at risk here, but all the Digital Point forumites with their small health sites and other resource type websites. Now that Knol is here I think it's going to be even more important to develop your 'voice' as a blogger. If you just give info chances are people will go elsewhere to get it. After all, Knol has somehow already managed to get to Google's front page for some of the relevant keywords. Hmmm, I wonder how they did that...
Thanks eXe for the answer. That doesn't sound good. I guess I won't build a page on Knol just to give some more unique content to a Google site.
All we can do is never link to a Knol page. If they still get to the front page, then we know that Google is bias toward it's own content -- which is a really, really bad thing.
Knol was on the front page for terms like 'how to backpack' the day after the launch, in the third spot even. That makes me go a big "HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM."
Knol will most likely end up like Wikipedia whereas it Hoovers up all the top listings in Google. Very soon the top ten of any search will have Knol and Wikipedia links making it that much harder for independent developers of content to get anywhere using search engines. Oh, that's right - I am supposed to pay Google via AdWords to get readers to MY content.
The keyword you mentioned has the knol page in 2nd ranking but if all pages are similar to this one, then i would support Knol. As that page is full of information and fully packed with content, and deserves the ranking.. But if every empty page just opened in knol gets to top, that would show that how Biased google is.
And still i would say, Knolling is entirely the other way far from blogging.. Knol is just a static page of knowledge information and blog is an anytime update guide.
Sure Dan, you can give that a try with the registration, in future it might come to some use.. if at all Knol goes a good hit.
I disagree. I think knol is more along the lines of Squidoo or Hubpages. I don't think it will ever kill blogs. Look at it this way, why would Google want to kill blogs, since one of their business businesses is adsense on Blogger? No, it's just a way to compete with the sites that are taking money away from their coffers.
You know, this might be a business opportunity. People in the U.S. could start charging to post articles on Knol with their accounts. Wonder if you can have more than one knol account, like you can have multiple Blogger or Google Pages accounts. Now Google Pages, that was, and is, a bomb. They sort of abandoned it shortly after they started it.