Unless you’ve been spending the day under a rock, no doubt you’ve heard that Google is launching Knol, a user-generated publishing platform not unlike Wikipedia. There will be a few differences: subjects will be single-author and will be rated by users on their own merits, and the author’s name will appear in the article, unlike Wikipedia. Writers will have the option to put AdSense on their posts and will get a significant cut of the revenue from those ads.

A lot of people in the blogosphere, including Duncan Riley at Techcrunch, are asking if Google has gone too far in the sense they have gone from merely indexing the best content to providing it. Also, will Knol entries receive the same PageRank treatment that is so integral to Wikipedia’s success?

Wikipedia entries often rate highest for a whole universe of search terms. Will Google jimmy the algorithms to have Knol ranked higher? After all, if Knol’s content will feature AdSense, it’s in Google’s best interest to have Knol entries ranked as high as possible. It’s estimated that half of Wikipedia’s traffic comes through Google, and every click onto Wikipedia is a click into an advertising-free zone.

The part of Knol that is potentially most intriguing is the ability for users to rate each article and, potentially, jack its PageRank through the roof by merely voting.

Another question people are starting to grumble about are anti-trust issues. Google is on the forefront now of search, video, email, advertising, blogging, RSS, and is taking steps to get infiltarte the social network ring with Open Social, not to mention their new mobile platform. Now they are taking on Wikipedia.

Since AdSense leaks a lot of profit through revenue splitting with other content providers, it is certainly in their best interest to own the biggest purveyors of AdSense. That way there is no revenue sharing– 100% goes to Google.

Plenty of questions going forward.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 2:11 pmand is filed under Business, Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.