Shall I compare thee to a Knol? Hmm, perhaps not. Wikipedia sounds just right. Memorable and serious but not too serious. Of course Wikipedia is now an established “brand” and it has a big headstart on any competitor. Just like Google’s own search engine. If it is going to position itself ever to rival Wikipedia perhaps they should be thinking about a more pithy name. Knol? Unfortunately, every time I see or hear it I am transported back to Deely Plaza or the Texas Book Repository. However good the product, many have been done for because of poor marketing. This is perhaps a quibble. If a product is good enough it might survive uninspired marketing.
Bennett Haselton contributes the following essay on the consequences of license choice as it applies to sites based on user contributions; read on below for more of his big idea for making Knol a more useful resource. "Google Knol should allow its writers to publish under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. The preceding sentence may not mean much to you, but if you've ever wanted to cite a Wikipedia article as a source, or simply read a Wikipedia article with some assurance that someone wasn't pulling your leg with some creative editing, or if you've wanted to contribute to Wikipedia but couldn't afford the time unless you received some modest compensation for it, then the addition of this one simple feature to Knol might make all the difference."
Wikipedia is by far the largest and most popular online reference, though its accuracy is widely disputed. The real test may be the new rivals that are rising up to challenge it.
For several months Nick Carr has pointed out that Wikipedia ranks highly in the search results for a number of common topics in Google's search engine. In his post entitled Googlepedia Nick Carr speculated on why Google would see this trend as a threat in a paragraph which is excerpted below: "I'm guessing that serving as the front door for a vast ad-less info-moshpit outfitted with open source search tools is not exactly the future that Google has in mind for itself. Enter Knol." ..Clearly Nick Carr wasn't the only one that realized that Google was slowly turning into a Wikipedia redirector. Google wants to be the #1 source for information or at least be serving ads on the #1 sites on the Internet in specific area. Wikipedia was slowly eroding the company's effectivenes at achieving both goals. So it is unsurprising that Google has launched Knol and is trying to entice authors away from Wikipedia by offering them a chance to get paid. What is surprising is that Google is tipping it's search results to favor Knol. Or at least that is the conclusion of several search engine optimization (SEO) experts and also jibes with my experiences.
I'm going to start a dynamic list of topics that I do routine searches on, for the purpose of tracking Google rankings, with special attention to the relative rankings of Knol versus Wikipedia over time.
Wikipedia is a free, multilingual, open content encyclopedia project operated by the United States-based non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia. Launched in 2001 by Sheldon Rampton and Larry Sanger, it attempts to collect and summarize all human knowledge in every major language.
There is a striking similarity between one aspect of the two sites. The text of Knol articles uses the same font as Wikipedia. Mr. Dupont said that is simply coincidence, as it is a commonly used font.