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While buzz about the project has been circulating for some time, Google’s long-awaited Knol was greeted with little fanfare when it officially launched in beta earlier this month. It’s being described as a hybrid of Wikipedia and Squidoo, with a little dash of blogging. Knol aims to give experts in many fields the opportunity to publish articles, or “knols,” on any topic under the sun. But will this new site have any chance of competing with well-established rivals?

Wikipedia has become a site daily-visited by many internet users. One can find out the population of Malaysia, the name of that one actor in that one movie, or the various types of cheeses made from sheep’s milk. In some ways,Wikipedia’s success has encroached upon Google’s goal of indexing and making available all the world’s information. The site allows anyone to edit or tweak articles on a topic, and has sometimes been questioned as inaccurate. However, Wikipedia has yet to be challenged by smaller rivals in the online encyclopedia realm.

Knol is arguably Google’s first foray into content creation. Topics of knols include diverse subjects such as beauty product ingredients, whale watching in Maui, and herbal diabetes treatements. While users are doing the actual work of building up a store of “knols” (units of knowledge in article form), Google gets the benefit of directing search traffic to Knol articles based on keywords. A recent ReadWriteWeb article points out the possible dangers of this strategy: “Specifically, the issue with Knol is: how much Google tunes their search algorithm to favor Knol content vs alternative content on the same subject? This is where Google could be crossing the line. This is not so far from Microsoft bundling Explorer in order to beat Netscape.”

On the flip side, Knol could provide a serious forum for subject matter experts to publish their writings. Knol’s website, in explaining how the system works, points out this side benefit for authors. “The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, and related information.” Google is giving article authors a level of visibility and recognition that is not available on Wikipedia. Anyone can write a knol, and Google promises not to edit or change it to “enforce any particular viewpoint,” provided that it doesn’t violate the Terms of Service or Content Policy.

One way in which Knol will differ dramatically from Wikipedia is that Google will allow more than one author to tackle the same subject. The FAQ section explains, “If you do a search on a topic, you may very well see more than one knol in the search results.” Wikipedia, on the other hand, allows anyone to make changes to a given article to avoid duplication. This could give Google an advantage when it comes to search results.

The greatest advantage, of course, is the search technology behind Knol. Not only will Google index knols (potentially to the detriment of competitors), but the site itself has a powerful search tool for internal use. If your search returns few or no results, Knol prompts users to “search again allowing more matches”. If too many results are irrelevant, users can “search again allowing fewer matches.”

As the number of Knol articles increases, these functions could give users a valid reason to abandon Wikipedia. At present, however, Wikipedia’s active community makes for a vastly larger pool of information. Google’s ability to promote and increase the content on Knol will be the test which determines which encyclopedic site wins this battle.

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

By Haley January Eckels