Knol SEO

Examining the SEO properties of a Knol uncovers a number of surprises for web publishers. Checking the meta tags on an average Knol we find a:

<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow" />

The "nofollow" appears to be a quality control check on Google's behalf and is in complete contrast to Wikipedia and most other content sites on the web. What this will do is limit the damage of spam that makes it into Knol submissions. For instance; if someone tries to drop links to their own work the links will count for nothing in regard to search engine indexing.

Anything that limits spam has to be good, doesn't it? Not necessarily. The SEO power of Wikipedia comes from its huge amount of interlinking as well as the multitude of links on other sites pointing at it. Google's Knol cannot tap into the same resource like Wikipedia's interlinking because there can be more than one article on each topic and multiple version of the same work. This would no doubt dilute the effect of any interlinking. So to deal with this Google has gone in the total opposite direction and is making sure the links in a Knol count for nothing.

With links being used for actual usefulness instead of promotion, Knol may gain a bit more cred than has been predicted. The only real way to make a Knol popular is to have lots of external links to it and Google no doubt has taken that into consideration. Each Knol will stand on its own with only a small amount of SEO to get it started. It's up to the Web publishers and authors of Knols to promote them with links throughout the Web. This is a system which Google already knows well - this is the basis of its search engine.

It will be up to Google's search engine and all other search engines to see if they can truly evaluate the quality of each and every Knol. The last thing anyone wants to see is Knol getting special treatment and polluting listings with irrelevance.