Just a quick note -
yesterday Google (somewhat) quietly announced that
Google Knol is now accepting contributions from anyone with a Google login. Basically it’s a Google Wikipedia that allows contributors to earn a portion of the ads displayed on each page. They claim that it is more focused on how-to and informational articles than Wikipedia, which is more about information on generic words, phrases, movies, video games, gadgets, etc. but I’m sure that Knol will cover those things too.
It’s a smart idea from Google’s perspective. Wikipedia has a whopping 400 million pages indexed in Yahoo (~12M in Google) right now. That’s all from free contributors – so you can imagine how much content Knol is going to fill up with.
The Wikipedia Factor
Not to mention the fact that Google can make sure that Knol gets enough traffic to greatly benefit contributors. It’s always annoyed me how Google has unfairly (IMO) ranked Wikipedia so highly. When doing keyword research, seeing Wikipedia in the top two rankings is the kiss of death – it’s nearly impossible to push that page out no matter how authoritative your site becomes.
That’s the reason for the title of this post, because if you thought Wikipedia was unfairly favored, I can only imagine what Google Knol is going to do. I’m not saying that Knol or Wikipedia don’t deserve high search rankings, but it’s pretty obvious to me in my experience that there is some special under the covers favoritism given to Wikipedia.
What To Do About It?
So Knol is going to be huge. It’s going to cover every topic under the sun, and most importantly those articles are going to rank extremely well in the search engines. Here’s a tip:
For webmasters: Whatever niches you are in, start claiming your space by creating Google Knol articles on those topics before someone else beats you to it. If you can sneak in a reference to your site in the process, that would be even better!
For anyone: Take a look at Google Knol, maybe even do some keyword research to find what kinds of how-to topics people are searching for and write a few good articles. Odds are you will start seeing some passive revenue from your efforts!