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.

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’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.