Is it an ad platform worth watching?
For marketers who have hungrily eyed Wikipedia's gaudy traffic, fantasizing about using the reference site as a weapon in the war for reach, Knol could be a step in the right direction. But Knol won't be a cure for what ails marketers in the reference space, according to SEO consultant and author Aaron Wall, who says the space will be like a lot of other platforms that support contextual advertising.
For Wall, that means relatively subdued ads on the right side of the page.
"This doesn't seem like the kind of space that will get great clickthrough rates," Wall predicts. "But if Google wants to push it, the scale alone could be something to watch."
According to Barrett of Park Associates, Google may not be able to push Knol to the heights Wikipedia has seen. While the search giant's ever-changing algorithm could begin to favor Knol articles over Wikipedia entries, the real question will come down to community response.
"Nine out of 10 people will probably just see ads on something like Knol and ignore them," Barrett says. "The problem is that you rely on people to volunteer their time, energy and expertise to create the pages, and if you alienate them, then all of a sudden your platform stops growing. If that happens, it really doesn't matter how good a job you do at monetizing the space."
For Barrett, that means Knol won't tempt Wikipedia to try its hand at selling ads because Wikipedia would have to know that its brand relies on volunteers. In other words, the reference space may become a viable -- and effective -- tool for advertisers, but the likelihood of the space leader switching to a for-profit, ad-supported model probably won't become a reality anytime soon.
According to Barrett, the reference space demands singular answers, not diverging opinions. And that means Wikipedia's head start and devoted community of volunteer editors should be enough to keep Knol at bay.
That sentiment was seconded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales who chided the idea of Knol as a blog aggregator.
But that's not to say that Knol -- if it succeeds -- won't offer something beneficial to marketers looking to cut off a slice of the reference space that has thus far remained largely out of their reach.
"If there's a critical mass, it's hard to ignore the audience," explains Benjamin Reid, VP of sales engineering at Operative. "The challenge for Google is that display has a higher bar, and the credibility of the content is going to matter. Advertisers are going to take a more narrow view of unedited content. While that space is far from valueless, it is a lot more risky and advertisers will have to weigh that."