3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia

Written on July 25, 2008 – 11:46 am
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor

Granted, most people do not see Knol as a direct threat to Wikipedia, and the title of the post might upset some people… Even Google noted that Knol is not designed to compete with Wikipedia, but you have to admit that from a online knowledge-base perspective, the sites are quite similar. Knol might become the preferred choice in this field within a very short time.

1. Moderated data

The big difference between the two is that Knol is less anonymous then Wikipedia, it allows the author to moderate their respective articles. The idea is that the Author remains involved, since their name and reputation is permanently attached to it. This approach takes people out of anonymity and potential incorrect contributions, and might lead to higher quality articles prone to error. Knol allows the community to rank respective Knols, and allows more Knols about the same topic, another big difference between the two services.

2. Ads enabled

Knol will have ads enabled from launch, supplied by Google AdSense. Simply enable your adsense in your profile page, and you are ready to make some money from your content. If you have been contributing to Wikipedia (or not), simply copy your data to Knol and get Adsense dollars from it.

3. Google pagerank

Wikipedia currently enjoys a lot of top ranking results on Google, but one day after launch, Danny from Search Engine Land found that 1/3 of the pages listed on the Knol home page that I tested ranked in the top results. Example: He found that the search term “How to Backpack” scores on number three, i’m not sure if Google applied any additional page-rank to the site, as the search term scores in the top three on Yahoo as well. However, the fact Knol’s search results appear on Google are an immediate threat to Wikipedia’s traffic.

In other news: Dutch company Knol sells steamcleaning equipment, not domain names!

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google, Google Knol, Knol, pagerank, wikipedia

About the author: Joop currently resides in Seoul, South Korea. He is researching technology and policy trends in this country for his master thesis in Business Administration.

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12 comments/trackbacks to “3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia”

Jul 25, 2008: Wikipedia vs. Knol « suprfish
[...] Will Knol replace Wikipedia? Doubt it. But I do think that Knol will become a strong and common reference for information, much like Wikipedia is. It’d be better, too; since knols are written by one person and are not constantly changing, they are more authoritative. [...]
Jul 25, 2008: Library Views 圖書館觀點 » Knol 要做維基百科的維基百科
[...] Problogger － Google’s Knol – A Wikipedia Killer or a Blog Killer? The Next Web － 3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia udn數位資訊－ [...]
Jul 30, 2008: TheNextWeb.org: Lies, damned lies, and statistics
[...] Reality in Sweden: download a HD DVD in two seconds 2: 3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia 3: Nasza-klasa: Polish example of the copy-cat [...]

By David Petherick on Jul 25, 2008

4th Reason: Search Engine Results Position

The Google Knol I created just yesterday entitled ‘How to Read the Russian Alphabet in 75 Minutes’ is already appearing on Page 1 of a Google Search for “read russian” with 12,300,000 results following.

See http://www.google.com/search?&q=read+russian

Reply
By Ivan on Jul 25, 2008

I see it as number five David. Also I bet with you that links to Knol will be the separate part of the search result at Google. Like Google Books are.

Reply
By David Petherick on Jul 25, 2008

Yes, I get position 5 with that search too - #5 out of 12 million is pretty cool.

I think you may be correct about different listing Ivan, and it’ll become part of a more semantic search experience.

However, Google may have to be ‘neutral’ about this content and not favour it over anything else - after all their reputation is built on quality, unbiased search first and foremost.

Reply
By Pearl on Jul 25, 2008

3 reasons why it won’t:

1) Wikipedia has a big head start with 2.5 million articles in English. Even with PageRank, Google can’t push its own content too blatantly, without ruining its aura of neutrality.

2) Seth Godin’s Squidoo has been around for years, and it hasn’t taken off. Knol is very close to the same thing.

3) As anyone who blogs or tries to build a site with AdWords as a model, those $30 monthly checks are NOT the reason you keep doing it.

Google has promised many times that it will not get into the content business, and it should learn that it should keep its word - this is a strategic mistake for them because of the direct conflicts of interest that result from their participation in this space.

Reply
By Joop Dorresteijn on Jul 25, 2008

Also, good reply from ‘Azharcs’:

3 reasons why Wikipedia will kick Knol’s Ass.
[0] => No ads and it is clean. It is made by people who don’t intend to make money, created by people whose world don’t revolve around money and read by people who value knowledge more than money.
[1] => Wikipedia is millions of pages ahead of Google Knol when it comes to content. 7 million pages in 200 languages. Money can’t buy you that.
[2] => Wikipedia is synonymous with knowledge but with Google Knol, only the first four letters match, that is the closest it comes to knowledge.
I can go on, but will stop here. This is Google’s narrow minded way of making money by showing more ads. They clearly were directing lot of traffic to Wikipedia pages, they realized why direct the traffic to some other site when we can let users steal content from Wikipedia and show it in Knol.

Reply
By PJ Brunet on Jul 25, 2008

No matter how hard they try, Wikipedia will never contain even 1% of the world’s knowledge.

At first glance Knol feels more human to me, more part of the Internet. I probably won’t use it though, I have enough work to do on my own domains, and comments to post ;-)

Reply
By Niels Olson on Jul 25, 2008

The honors surgery medical students at Tulane were just sitting around waiting for a lecture and it came up that wikipedia has become scary accurate for a lot of biomedical stuff. Like, it becomes difficult in one’s own mind to justify the primary literature research when Wikipedia is patently accurate on most of this subject matter. I’ve even had new, referenced articles on microbiology pulled because, for example, an admin, who happened to be a PhD microbiologist, felt the subject should be a redirect to a larger article. He was probably right.

The mental model that Wikipedia is maintained by 20-year losers in their parents basements listening to emo is probably not as accurate as you might like to think. Those are just the ones who have time to take pictures of themselves.

Reply
By Ackbar on Jul 26, 2008

“If you have been contributing to Wikipedia (or not), simply copy your data to Knol and get Adsense dollars from it.”

sounds like a responsible approach to collaboration

Reply
By Ben Yates on Jul 28, 2008

You can’t copy content from Wikipeda to Knol because the licenses aren’t compatible.

Reply

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