True to its tradition of expanding into exciting, unchartered waters, Google is about to release a groundbreaking service. Engineered to rival Wikipedia, Knol is the new user-driven encyclopedia set for launch that will provide much need recognition to online authors and experts. An apparent amalgam of a wiki and a social bookmarking site, Knol is set to revolutionize the Web experience.

While a lot of SEOs are up in arms at the possibility of a Google sponsored website occupying the top spot for many competitive keyword searches, others are lamenting the fall from grace of and possible end for Wikipedia’s popularity as an information source.

Geared to span science and technology, the environment, the arts and humanities, and every imaginable subject in the human realm of knowledge, Knol takes its name from the word itself. A single webpage will be referred to as a knol, or a unit of knowledge. Semantically analogous to a wiki, a knol will provide the functionality to enable voting, much like a social bookmarking website such as Digg. As such, Google Knol will incorporate aspects of an encyclopedia, as well as a social bookmarking site AND a discussion forum.

It is likely that Knol will inevitably become the target of Internet marketers that strive to promote commercial products with the intention of sourcing the immense traffic that comes with being placed at the top of the search engine results page. Whether such a position will be bestowed naturally or artificially is another bone of contention with many a search marketer. Many SEOs think Google might unfairly position Knols at the top place for search results, what they say is might be an unfair practice. Other SEOs, such as Nathan Hall, are of the opinion that very high quality incoming links to Knols, such as those from Nasa and Google itself, will be enough to algorithmically guarantee Knols top spots in many keyword searches.

Some of the advantages of Knol are:

More motivation for authors to contribute, since Knol can be monetized

More competition to generate better content, and hence better quality articles

A user voting system, that incorporates some elements of user-driven content emulating social bookmarking websitse susch as Digg and Reddit.

Increased exposure to authors, as the best Knols will occupy the highest search results.

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