Chad Egeland

Googles newest product Knol has been taken out of hiding and has been opened up for the public to now see and play with. Knol is best described as a verified Wikipedia of sorts where the author of each Knol is verified through either credit card or by phone. No longer can the author of content hide behind the anonymity of the web but is rather thrust into the spotlight as you are shown exactly who has authored each Knol. In theory this should provide users with high quality content.

Knol also uses many social aspects as well to help further build each Knol. By default a system similar to Wikipedia called open collaboration (that the author can later change to closed) has been implemented where others can contribute information to the Knol. Differing from Wikipedia is that the original author of the Knol must approve the changes before they go live. This type of moderation should keep the vandals clear of tampering with pages. Using ideas from blogging platforms Knol also allows for commenting and rankings allowing for community input and hopefully improvement into that Knol.

Knol sounds all fine and handy and I’m sure most Google fanboys will be praising the virtues and ringing the bells of sainthood for Knol but I see it differently. In fact Knol scares the hell out of me and here is why. Google is now not only providing the search results to the end user but they are now also providing the content to the user as well. I see this as I massive conflict of interest. In the end what is going to stop Google from tweaking their search algorithm to slightly favor Knol pages over Wikipedia pages or personal blog pages or any other content pages on the same subject? I have already seen how many search terms in Google will return a YouTube video in the number one position when clearly there is better information available in the lower ranking pages. How is anyone supposed to compete against a Google owned property fairly?

Currently one of the featured Knols is by The Family Handyman Magazine (an unverified author) about Toilet Clogs. Considering that Knol just launched to the public yesterday if you search for the term toilet clogs from within Google (using google.ca) you will find that the Knol page for this comes up for the term in the number 5 slot with a wikihow article about toilet clogs in the number 6 slot. At first glance both results look very equal in value of content, both have pictures the wikihow article even has video. The wikihow article should be older than the Knol article, the wikihow article even has 2 links pointing back to it according to the Google link check. So why is it that when all things are factored in the Google Knol article ranks higher than the Wikihow article? I would think it’s because Knol is a Google property and because of this wins out against other sites of equal value.

Is the end Google Knol will probably provide high quality information to the user but at what cost to the Google search brand? If in future searches you always find the Google Knol pages in the top results many users (myself included) may feel Google is being biased towards its own brands and may in turn feel they are not being served the best possible results and are instead being spoon fed what Google feels to be the best results. Google Knol may be the mistake that allows other search engines to gain ground on Google if this proves to be true as in the end all the user really wants is the best result possible to help them find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently.

Further Reading
Wired
Search Engine Land
Google Blog