Google Knols - Friend or Foe?

Google Knols - Friend or Foe?
July 30, by Allen Graves

Google has continued their quest for Internet dominance by releasing what many see as a competitor to major article directories. Although Google denies competing with article directories and instead states that they are focusing on more of a Wikipedia-like format, the similarities to the top article directories are striking.

For instance, unlike Wikipedia, there is one author per article. Multiple authors are able to create multiple articles on the same topic. Just as major article directories like EzineArticles.com or Website-Articles.net have been doing for years.

Another strikingly similar feature is how each author is given their own "author bio" page. Just like article directories, Knol allows a surfer to seek out and find articles written by a single author. That, along with seamlessly inserted fields for ratings and comments (and a nice WYSIWYG editor) and Knol appears eerily similar to a lot of the top article directories out there.

This quickly caught the attention of article directory kingpins like Christopher Knight and myself. Chris entered a great blog post today at the Ezinearticles.com blog. According to his blog, Mr. Knight does not appear to be too worried about the whole issue and seems committed to sticking with his very solid business plan.

So what does this all mean to article marketers?

I believe that we are watching the dawn of a new generation. Knols are going to be the catalyst that begins the transformation of article marketing as we know it today and as we will know it in a few short months.

First of all, I have to praise the message that Google is sending out with Knols. By using nofollow tags on their hyperlinks, they are letting the article marketing world know what I have personally been preaching for years. Article marketing is not about the links. It is not about Off-page S.E.O. for your website.

Article marketing is marketing, plain and simple. Those who have so diligently used it for massive link building throughout the years are about to realize a huge problem. Those links are not going to matter anymore.

I believe that right now we are seeing the "big switch" from article marketing working for link building and SEO purposes to article marketing working for the purpose it is meant for...marketing.

Take a step back and look at the whole picture for a moment. With EzineArticles.com out there happily dominating the article marketing industry, why would Google (or anyone for that matter) launch a service that would directly compete with them?

I believe it is because Google is making a statement. A statement that is long overdue.

Why Knols?

Article Marketing has been a powerful marketing technique for several years. Throughout its existence, there have been blackhat techniques, one after another, flooding the article directories with "crap" content.

The Internet is for quality, informative content...not crap.

Even today, after all those techniques have been thwarted, there are still thousands upon thousands of people flooding the article directories with regurgitated information in hopes of getting that all-important backlink.

Google has finally stood up and spoken. Those who continue marketing articles for backlinking purposes are now going to fail. If you have placed less-than-expert content out there on the internet then you have frankly done it in vain. The backlinks will not be important anymore and the content is such that people will not click on your link...nor will your articles rank highly enough to collect organic traffic in the first place.

What do you need to do?

As an article marketer, the first thing you need to do is to decide which category you fall into. Have you been using your articles to get backlinks to your website or have you been using them to give content to the readers?

Be honest with yourself!!!

If you fall into the first category, then all you have to do is change the way you think about article marketing as a whole. Write like you want the reader to understand what you want to tell them! Then start creating your new articles in the manner that Google is asking for.

If you fall into the second category, I mean REALLY fall into the second category, then you don't have anything to worry about. Just keep an eye out for some article directories to begin failing and some to begin rising in power. If you notice a change...adapt.

That's as much as I want to talk about to this point. I will be doing some research over the next few days to try and establish some sort of a baseline to go by while trying to determine the significance Knols will have on our community.

Of course, you're going to want to come back to The Article Marketing Hub to find out the latest information.

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