Google Knol

The Google version of Wikipedia, Knol is the fairly new service that allows users to write articles on whatever they have knowledge on. This is to emphasise the importance of an article being written by someone who is an expert in their field.

Authorities
This stringent quality control is similar to how Google wants webmasters to be "Authorities" in their area of expertise, this is apparently key to getting a website to achieve a top ranking position. This is quite idealistic and demanding for webmasters, but it does place importance on quality of content which is great. Without this, the internet could have become so overladen with spam that users would never find what they wanted. Well done Google.

Dominant rankings
With Knol, Google has the chance to properly control the information published there and place greater emphasis on "Authorities" and people with unique knowledge. They could potentially alter the position of Knol pages on the Google SERPs too. By making Knol easier to login and publish articles than Wikipedia, it makes it *potentially* one of the biggest user generated content websites. Knol will, in time have coverage to rival Wikipedia, it will have a page ranking for just about every search term ever...

Wikipedia
While Wikipedia relies on a large amount of inlinks and consistant traffic and readership to ensure it ranks highly, what's stopping Google from being evil* and artificially improving the position of Knol pages on the Google SERPs? They could always argue that as Knol articles focus on "experts" and "authorities" on a given subject, they will rank higher... Remember how to get a top ranking page? See "Authorities"

Another conspiracy?
So what does Google get out of all this? Well, the big difference between Wikipedia and Knol, is that one is owned by a not for profit company and one is owned by, perhaps, the biggest money spinner of all time, Google. Google has got a revenue generating strategy for Knol, and this is to place its Adsense programme all over the UGC articles created by you and I. Now, I am sure that providing the Knol users with some revenue via Adsense is great, but does this steer content away from being measured on quality?

People will always criticise Wikipedia for the inaccuracies and downright lies on its articles, but for such a massive site, it deals with this pretty well, and mostly the content is good. If Knol is easier to create an account on, I'm going to bet that content will be terrible compared to Wikipedias. How will Google monitor all of this? Easy, by watching their bank balance grow...

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* - Google is now officially evil after it monetised brand names that it didn't own on PPC. How much money has it made from the PPC brand issue since it went live?

A funny headline on this post about Knol. If that didn't cut to the chase, nothing does! Here is an example of "quality" content generated by an expert/authority. Or is it just very poorly written and researched? Does this still count as the work of an expert/authority on film reviews?

An example of "quality" content generated by an expert/authority. Or is it just a Wikipedia article that has been pasted in?

Google is Evil

Quick note about the google brand term issue on Adwords PPC... Why can anyone bid on anyone elses brand except for the keyword "Google". Is Google removing anyone bidding on Google or is the CPC being driven up too because of unrelated landing pages? I've seen a few ads for the keyword "Google" but none last that long. http://www.wininvesting.co.uk/ seem to be on Google and Microsoft, I imagine the cost must be considerable especially as conversions must be really crappy. How does Google see this as an improvement in quality? I'd like to know how much Google generated in additional revenue since the new ruling went live on the 5th of May... Less people needed to police the PPC Results and a massive increase in PPC ad spend just to stay in the chase (a friend of mine works as PPC manager for a large company and expects the PPC ad spend to rise 25% just on Google) means Google will do very well over the next few weeks until people realise their annual PPC spend has been exceeded...

Business Blogging

Increasingly, businesses have found value in creating a blog for their business. Several of my clients have asked me about creating a blog or optimising and making better use of their current Blog.Part of this growth in interest has been generated by the fact that a lot of the current fortune 500 companies use either internal or external Blogs to communicate with employees or customers.

Business Blogging can add a level of interaction that is often impossible from a standard corporate website. It is an informal way to communicate and increases the perception (to users) of accessibility and transparency with even the largest and companies.

Blogging. How to do it and how not to do it...
In my opinion, a company in the technology / IT / Internet area should look at creating a Blog strategy. In the same way that technology and IT companies were the first to be interested in creating a website for their business, they should lead the way again.

Anonymous business Blogs should not contain inappropriate content. A Bloggers reputation thrives on his/her ability to post genuine unique, original content. Do not copy other content, bring in new ideas and offer opinion for and against current thinking!

Don’t copy other posts or information. Reference and cite other material and do notcopy directly unless you are referencing a source. Keep material as original and unique as possible. Offer advice hints and tips on your area of expertise. This way people are likely to link to you because you provide good quality, original information.

The reasoning behind Macromedias decision to Blog was that they wanted people to see their Blog as “Real” and not part of a marketing agenda, something to help their employees to communicate with the community of developers using their software. This is why the Blogs are under normal Blog domains and not under the corporate Macromedia domain.

A Blog is similar to (but not to be confused with) a “latest news” part of your site; it is a bit less formal and most importantly, allows users to post comments. This degree of interactivity is not commonly available on corporate websites. Users can complain or complement your products or services. Obviously some good positive feedback on your Blog would be great, but what about complaints? This at least gives you the chance to solve the problem. (Doing so would win you some respect with the other readers)

Making money from Blogs

Promotional Blog
The easiest way to make money from your Blog is to use it to promote your product or service. Make sure you offer original content though; people will not visit a Blog stuffed with marketing text.

Use Adsense on your Blog
Adsense is the “Google Content Network”. It is part of another website that displays adverts from Googles Adwords PPC programme. By paying for Adwords PPC, your site is advertised on relevant websites that use Adsense.

Anyone with a website can sign up to Adsense and generate a percentage (of the amount paid by the PPC user) each time someone clicks through. Your Blog needs to have relatively high traffic to benefit from this.

Cleverly, Macromedias Blog is promoting its own products and using Adsense to do it. Notice the Blog? All content created by a Macromedia employee. The Google Adsense box is advertising Macromedias own software too, so they are effectively supplying traffic to purchase their own software and generating revenue via Adsense to offset the cost in Adwords.

I hope this post has been of use to those who are interested in creating a business blog.

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