Move over Wikipedia,

Yahoo Answers,

Mahalo, and

Squidoo. Maybe. That’s because Google’s testing its own service to

let people build a repository of knowledge. In fact, knowledge forms the core of

the service’s name: Google Knol.



Screenshot of Google Knol page (feel free to use this and

those below, just link to

this story, please)

Google Knol is designed to allow anyone to create a page on any topic, which

others can comment on, rate, and contribute to if the primary author allows. The

service is in a private test beta. You can’t apply to be part of it, nor can the

pubic see the pages that have been made. Google also stressed to me that what’s

shown in the screenshots it provided might change and that the service might not

launch at all.





NOTE: Knol has launched since this article was written. See Google’s Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation

As said, the service gets its name from the word "knowledge." A "knol" is a

new term that Google has coined to stand for a unit of knowledge, and they’re

also using that word as the name for pages within the service and the service

itself.

Knol pages will be hosted by Google. Authors will have the option to enable

Google ads and share in revenue. The pages will be made available to be found

through a Knol-specific search as well as through Google itself or via other

search engines, as they won’t be blocked from spiders. It’s likely the service

will be found at knol.google.com or some similar standalone address, if it

indeed finally launches. As said, a launch might not happen at all — there’s

certainly no set date.

Why do Knol? Google vice president of engineering, Udi Manber, who heads the

project, told me that is designed to help people put knowledge on the web that

doesn’t currently exist, which in turn should make search better, since there

will be better information out there.

Of course, Google already offers other content creation tools, such as

Blogger and

Google Page Creator. In addition, there

are non-Google tools people already use to publish content, not to mention

collaborative tools such as those I named at the opening of this article. Why

yet another tool?

Manber said that Knol has a special focus on authors and a collection of tools

that Google thinks is unique, and which in turn should encourage both content

creation and readership.

"Knol is all about the authors," he said. "We believe that knowing who wrote

a knol will significantly help users make better use of web content."

Somehow, I suspect Seth Godin over at Squidoo isn’t going to be buying the

uniqueness argument. At least on the face of the screenshots (the one above is a

page authored by Manber’s wife, who is testing the system), Squidoo offers

pages featuring authors prominently, which also allow ratings and some

collaboration.

Speaking of Squidoo leads to another issue. Back in July, Squidoo found

spammers has caused the site itself to

take a hit in Google

rankings. For Google to offer a similar service seems an invitation to disaster.

Won’t spammers overrun it, in the same way that many feel spammers have overrun

Google-owned Blogger? Doesn’t that introduce yet more crud to ironically pollute

Google’s own search results?

Manber said he expect spammers will end up in the system but that Google has

already found ways to defeat them with Blogger and will take similar actions, if

needed, with Knol. I’d agree, Blogger spam showing up in Google has gotten much

better over the past few months. However, I don’t think I’d say the problem is

defeated — and even if Google manages to wipe it out, it’s still potentially

out there messing up other search engines.

This is not to say that all of Knol will be spam. Indeed, it’s likely that

the prominence of having content within a Google-hosted service may attract some

outstanding authors. Manber certainly expect this, saying that he hopes content

is created that will be so good that Google itself will rank it tops in

searches.

That leads to another problem. Is this Google going a step too far? Google

abandoned its search roots long ago, the idea that it was just a pointer to

other information. Today, its

Search, Ads, & Apps

mantra that CEO Eric Schmidt has repeated on several occasions underscores that

offering content tools is fair game within its mission. But does hosting content

turn it into a competitor with other content providers and set up an unfair

advantage in gaining traffic that might otherwise flow to them?

Manber offered a number of reassurances that this is not the case:

The content will be owned by the authors, who can reprint it as they like



Authors can link out at will (and links might NOT have nofollow attributes

on them, allowing reputation to flow from Knol pages to others)



on them, allowing reputation to flow from Knol pages to others) APIs will allow Knol information to be used by others



Allowing ads other than Google’s might be a possibility (though this was

something I raised, rather than Google suggesting itself. Personally, I highly

doubt this would ever happen)



something I raised, rather than Google suggesting itself. Personally, I highly doubt this would ever happen) Google will give no special weight to these pages; if they rank, they rank

because they compete with other pages and win the algorithm race

Of course, Manber did say that Google could better tell which of the Knol

pages were of high quality by looking at signals such as ratings. Because the

content database is hosted at Google, it could easily pull the rating info in

without having to "guess" or "scrape" it off pages.

My concern in hearing this was that other pages with ratings might not have

their information taking in as a quality signal, since Google couldn’t as easily

harvest it. Thus, Knol pages might get an unfair advantage. To that, Manber

stressed that he didn’t see such signals being used at first, and if they were

down the line, Google might seek a way for others to provide similar signals to

its search engine.

Still, I have concerns about Knol in hurting independent authorship, just as

some of the other services I’ve named do as well. Go back two years ago, and

searches rarely came up with Wikipedia pages. Today, it almost feels required

that Wikipedia gets one if not two listings on Google, due to its

indented results

feature.

The traffic that Wikipedia gets from Google has inspired others. Yahoo

Answers pages show up in Google for topics; Mahalo would love to rank for top

terms — and I’ve already mentioned Squidoo’s presence in search results. Now

Google gets into the picture to have its own hosted content compete for the

dwindling diversity of results on the search results page. It begins to feel

like the knowledge aggregators are going to push out anyone publishing knowledge

outside such aggregation systems.

I’ll have much more to say about this as I continue on from my

Search 3.0 story and

into the next chapter, Search 4.0, that’s touched on in the earlier piece. In

short, at some point search engines cross over a line where they’re providing

more information than simple answers or pointing out, which changes them from

being a search service. Mahalo’s had a fast evolution along these lines, with

some pages that are simply content destinations than search results. What

happens when and if the major search engines do the same? Getting that balance

of human knowledge, compiled information, but still being a pointer is important.

If Knol launches, Google’s going to face that challenge square on.

Of course, in some ways Google might not have a choice. Yahoo has Yahoo

Answers; Microsoft has its own answers service; Wikipedia has experienced huge

growth, and things like Mahalo get some attention since they use humans, which

Google is seen to ignore. A service like Knol might be necessary to stay

competitive.

Here’s more of the screenshot from above:

Here’s how the bottom of the Knol page looks: