Google Knol, information database to compete with Wikipedia: targeted advertising, anyone?

Google introduced Knol last week, an open database of articles written by the public. As opposed to Wikipedia, the articles will be written by one person only and cannot be edited by anyone else than the author. Google’s goal is to build a website with knowledge from ‘authorities’ and puts its faith in a peer review and voting system to separate the wheat from the chaff. Google will reward the authors with part of the advertising revenue from their own articles.

Google not meddling with the content might become the largest downside of this project. We think that the largest problem will lie in copyright protection, as we can easily see writers copy other content almost literally in an attempt to make money easily. We think that Google will have to (and will) at least assign administrators to control copyright infringements. Therefore, and in spite of their promises not to edit content, we expect to see total control included in the Terms of Service.

As marketers we are becoming enthusiastic about the prospect, though: Advertising can be highly targeted on a service like this. Google AdWords could act as an Affiliate Agency on this platform, selecting the sites that are highly appreciated and often consulted for their marketing program. If Google can regulate the content on Knol for copyright issues, we think that advertising these pages can yield great results. Knol is still in closed trial but you will hear from us when it goes public. The following is a manipulated screenshot of the feature from Google, where you can already see the review options (click for larger image):

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 2:24 am and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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