how will Google "Knol" affect affiliates and affiliate marketing?

webdev · #1 (**permalink**) 12-17-2007, 08:49 AM

have a read here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7144970.stm

This is actually scary news for us affiliates.

Thoughts?

siyab · #2 (**permalink**) 12-17-2007, 09:49 AM

google really does want to gobble up everything other than it on the internet and stablish its monopoly, doesn't it???

lisa · #3 (**permalink**) 12-17-2007, 09:59 AM

Webdev, when you say "scary news for us affiliates" do you mean in terms of the knols will take over the search engine rankings? I'm not so sure. Sounds like to me, it's just going to be a better Wikipedia and may hurt their rankings more than anything.

But as far as taking over the SERPS, I'm not so sure that should be a big concern due to the fact it's still a benefit of Google to display a wide variety of relevant results from different sites. I would hope they'd be smart enough not to clog up the rankings with a bunch of knol pages. I just don't see that happening unless I'm missing something in the explanation of what knol is going to do.

siyab · #4 (**permalink**) 12-17-2007, 10:04 AM

btw, is it a beta version of it released yet?

webdev · #5 (**permalink**) 12-17-2007, 07:20 PM

"Knol" could serve as a competition to rest of the independent information/article sites. People would favor google articles over other sites. Knol could drive traffic away from your site.

This all just speculation but I'm not really sure how it would work. Right now, you can't find in-depth information on wikipedia on every topic therefore its not so much of a completion with other sites. If google create a system where a user can find anything and everything about any topic then there be no need for searching around.

lisa · #6 (**permalink**) 12-17-2007, 07:50 PM

Even though Google doesn't owe us publishers/affiliates anything, they still have developed loyalty with us through programs like AdSense. If they took over the SERPS completely with knol and made the info-sites irrelevant, that just seems like a bad business move to me on many levels.

Keep in mind, even though people see AdSense as Google giving away some of their revenue to us, the bottom line is AdSense is a profitable program for them just like AdWords. So getting rid of affiliate/information sites would mean a huge decrease in AdSense payouts and that would slow down the amount of advertising dollars pumped into AdWords - the real Google money-maker.

Anyway, I'm babbling....and as you said, it's in the early stages so we'll have to see what happens. I still have my faith in Google... for now.

Knol could have some impact, but I just can't see it wiping out affiliate/info sites altogether in the SERPS. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself for now.

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