Here comes the Google Caffeine. Will it favour Google Knol?

Google has requested some help a few weeks ago to test the new search engine infrastructure under the name of Caffeine. So far, the test has resulted in some promising facts: Better improvement in search speed, index size and accuracy.

A knol written by Andreas Kemper explores the possibilities of knols to rank better in Google Caffeine.

So far, Andreas has observed that his knols are going up in Google Caffeine result pages. Even better, his bad-ranked knol with useful content is ranked considerably better in the new search engine infrastructure.

All of the observations are focusing on one issue important for all knol writers: Will bad-ranked knols rank better in Google Caffeine?

Please share your very own experience, either in this article on Andreas’ knol – Are your knols rank better in Google Caffeine?

The article’s title is sad, really: “Poor Google Knol Has Gone From A Wikipedia Killer To A Craigslist Wannabe”.

Unfortunately, the claim is reasonable – Google Knol has grown into something that resembles Craiglist more than Wikipedia – So many “marketers” create knols that promote things that add little or no knowledge to the visitors. The effect: A decline in traffic.

As you can see, Google Knol’s traffic tops in February and March 2009 – Since then, the traffic declines.

Despite those facts, I still believe in the potential of Google Knol – They just need to “slap” naughty members that offer nothing but “advertorial.”

I even think many knols are written in such a way that Google Knol resembles an article directory. Don’t let Google Knol slips away and ends up as Lively or Google Notebooks – Deceased.

• We have simplified the links on the top of the page, and added the “My profile” drop-down.
• You can now star knols as your personal “Favorites”, adding them to a private list on your profile page.
• You can create knols using templates. Authors, write good templates and we will feature them!
• From an author’s profile you can subscribe to an Atom Feed of authors revisions, comments and replies.
• We added a Review Scorecard, one step toward addressing spam, plagiarism and low-quality content.

Knol Today is a firm believer of small things that can help the world a more sustainable place to live.

In fact, all of my network of sites, anchored by Noobpreneur Entrepreneurial Blog, are 100% green energy powered. The network carbon footprints are neutralised by purchasing wind energy.

In concordance to the small steps Knol Today has begun, the Google energy team has launched a proposal that mainly contain the analysis on how we could greatly reduce fossil fuel use by 2030 (the proposal is announced on October 1, 2008.

A knol by Jeffery Greenblatt on clean energy proposal by Google offers the summarised version of the proposal.

Jeffery explained that the proposal will allow significant reduction in energy use, based on Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) current baseline:

• Fossil fuel-based electricity generation by 88%
• Vehicle oil consumption by 38%
• Dependence on imported oil (currently 10 million barrels per day) by 33%
• Electricity-sector CO2 emissions by 95%
• Personal vehicle sector CO2 emissions by 38%
• US CO2 emissions overall by 48% (40% from today’s CO2 emission level)

The proposal contains the wealth of information and action plans to reach the milestones, which include replacing all coal and oil electricity generation, and about half of that from natural gas, with renewable electricity.

what’s Google role in this clean energy proposal?

Google is committed to implementing innovative and responsible environmental practices in every aspect of our business. To date, we’ve taken concrete steps to bolster the efficiency of our data centers and reduce the carbon footprint of our building and office operations. And we’re always looking for ways to create innovative products that help our users “go green.” Our philanthropic arm, Google.org, has made $50 million in renewable energy grants and investments to develop breakthrough technologies such as solar thermal, enhanced geothermal, and advanced wind. In 2007 we launched our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE

To learn more on the Clean Energy 2030 proposal, please visit Jeffery’s knol.

Andy Henry wrote a how-to guide on writing a great knol that might appeal a beginner knol writer.

Early in his knol, Andy wrote an interesting remark:

Introductory message for newbies to knols – Do NOT listen to any hype and sensationalising from people hallucinating benefits of using knols. Knols are a Google resource of content contributed by members much like a next generation version of Wikis, Squidoo Lenses and article repositories. There is NO evidence to suggest that Google will bump knols to the top of the search engine positions, or that they will get any sort of preferential treatment – anyone telling you otherwise is feeding you stories. Don’t jump in and make bad knols because someone told you that it was a bandwagon to ride or that you’re gonna miss ‘the next big thing’ by not throwing up every piece of content you have.

That is very much true, as I have visited some knols on Google Knol that are blatantly created for the search engine optimisation and Internet marketing purposes.

Fortunately, the knols won’t stay on Google Knol for long – As Andy confirmed in his knol, Google Knol Team and members do the quality control.

However, as I witnessed in knols, users and members alike don’t really do quality control in term of the knol’s purpose. I’ve seen knols with scraped contents from other websites that get good star rating by users – the knols are obviously don’t deserve a five star for excellent, but copied content.

The Google Knol Team has introduced some sort of a system that allows user to flag inappropriate content, but that’s up to the users’ opinion and knowledge about what is ethical and what is not in knol writing.

Hopefully this will change in the near future, or as I’m afraid what will the Google Knol become – the spam haven.

Image by blisspix.

I’ve written about several exceptional portal knols, such as International Space Portal, Canoeing and Kayaking Resources, and Knolympics.

Portal knols are basically knols that gather similar topic knols or knols meeting a certain criteria, usually through open collaboration – knol writers can join the portal and submit or write knols with styles and rules defined by the portal knol owners.

I view the open collaboration model as a trend setter for knols in Google Knol, and probably for all collaborated content creation in other sites, including Wikipedia.

Portal knols not only help knol readers that are interested in a certain topic to read related knols, but also help knol writers to give their knols more exposure through the portal.

What’s more, the portal knols will likely to rank high in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), as I believe many people and the search engine would view the portal knols more important than the regular knols. This, in a domino effect, will affect the exposure of knols that are listed in the portal.

Another substantial benefit is that open collaborated knols are reviewed and edited to meet a certain quality measurement, therefore increasing the quality of the portal knols, as well as the knols listed the portal – all in all, this will eventually improve the quality of Google Knol itself.

I think the whole thing is a win-win situation for portal knol owners, as well as knol writers.

So, knol writers – join a portal knol open collaboration and make your knol better.

Image by Alicia Yeah.

There are knols that are entirely copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia; There are knols that are also a rip-off other sites, and use certain keywords in them to link to the knol writer websites; There are also knols that do nothing except selling products or services; and many more unethical knol writing existed.

I have written about this before – please read my post titled Will Google Knol Become a Spam Farm?

This post is about to list what is, in my opinion, defined as ethical knol writing.

What’s good for being ethical?

This is always a question about being good and responsible Google Knol user. It has a lot of potential – so big the potential, that many use it as promotional-only purposes.

What happened to Google Knol is no difference to what happened to Wikipedia, Squidoo, YouTube, Digg, and other similar sites. This is just the nature of user generated content – users basically can do almost anything, and their acts are ‘controlled’ by moderators and other users – it’s a free floating system, with a string attached to it.

Being ethical keep Google Knol ‘true’, as a source of knowledge. Google Knol has been beneficial, mainly for educational purposes. I’ve seen lecturers use knols as reference, and consultants use knols for consulting purposes.

Ethical knol writing

Here is what I think about ethical knol writing:

1. Don’t use excessive links – one or two links to outside sites are recommended.
2. Use a resource box with a paragraph of your info and a link or two in it – don’t do sales or promotional pitch inside the knol.
3. Don’t rip Wikipedia or other sites content – write your own, unique, article.
4. Use formal language and proper grammar – knols are different to blog posts.
5. If you source your knol from other sites, cite the source properly.
6. Use public domain or creative common images on knols to avoid copyright infringements – and don’t forget to cite the image source.
7. Promote your knol reasonably – avoid spamming people with your knol links.

You can also learn all about knol, including the dos-and-don’ts from the official guide to Google Knol by Google Knol Team.

If you have any other tips on being ethical knol writer, please add to the list by commenting to this post.

Image by justinbaeder.

We’ve added support for Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese. You can receive email notification of changes to your knols. The Link tool in the Edit mode makes it easier to link to other knols now. Also, Author Pages have been redesigned.

Tables are useful, and now they are also beautiful with our new table tool.

The language support is excellent – hopefully there are more to come. I wonder, will translation tools be available soon? I believe there are plenty of great knols written in non-English languages.

About email notification – this is a great feature. How about RSS feed-enabling the change notifications?

Regarding the table tool – it should be effective in organising information better, because I’ve seen knols with excellent content but terrible layouts.

Hopefully more positive changes to come from Google Knol Team.

I’m not sure about Google Knol Team level of strictness on this, but I did find many knols that are either useless – sorry for being harsh, spammy and scrapes from other sites, most notably Wikipedia.

Google Knol, in my opinion, contains extraordinary knols on broad range of topics. Having a few bad knols would not hurt much, but I see a growing trend of this due to the widely publicised (and tested) facts that knols rank well in the Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Even I just read that some even positioned #1 on Google SERPs for a certain keyword – Internet marketers and users alike must have already been knowing about this for long, and currently running a campaign on Google Knol monetisation.

I do not oppose knol monetisations, but I oppose knols that contain nothing but sales-pitches.

What can a knol user and visitor can do about this? You can do nothing and let the Google Knol sustain itself, or you can be a part of a group of people that report bad knols and comments.

What I do, is that I will not report anything to anyone. Instead, I will rate knols as it is – a 5 star for excellent knol, or 1 star for poor knol.

Hopefully Google Knol will not become Squidoo-ish. Let Wikipedia be Wikipedia, Squidoo be Squidoo, and Google Knol be Google Knol.

Image by Luchoedu.

A knol by Johnson C. Philip offers some legitimate reasons why you should contribute knols.

According to Mr. Johnson, here are the five reasons why you should write knols:

1. To help, motivate, and guide others
2. To better use free time by making writing knols a very special hobby.
3. To establish yourself as a writer, which will later be a mean to earn some extra income.
4. To sharpen your way of thinking.
5. To ‘leave your mark’ in this new media.

I would like to add number six: To promote and educate visitors about your websites and causes through knols you write, knowing that Google Knol will be bigger, more visited and more ‘social’ than Wikipedia.