probably the 1000th Knol post you've seen today

Because, as they say, self-plagiarism is style[1], I will quote myself

As for Knols, anyone who thinks Google's initiative is about anything other than the fact that Wikipedia has no Google ads is barking up the wrong tree.

Science Library Pad - Wikipedia death watch? - January 2, 2008

I'm pretty sure I remember Google saying something about "authoritative content blah blah" but the reality is that (like Wikipedia) anyone can create a Knol.  The main difference is you are the page admin, so (if you want) you can decide whether to accept or reject any edits that anyone else makes (or deny non-author edits entirely).

And, oh yeah: AdSense ads.

So you can contribute to Wikipedia, a vast and interlinked set of pages with high traffic.
Or toss your Knol out into the wind and hope it is gently lofted to the top of search results.
They're not very keen on you using a Knol to drive traffic to your site

We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website.

http://knol.google.com/k/knol-help/content-policy/si57lahl1w25/13#

It would seem it does open up yet another front in the spam battle.
In theory with Google Docs you could create docuspam, I guess knolspam is the next frontier.

I don't see any restriction against embedding a web tracking code, however it looks like it removes any JavaScript.  (To be specific, while it remembers JavaScript you enter in the HTML edit view, it strips it out when it actually renders the page.)  The info you can get from just an HTML tracking code is quite limited.  You can also get a small amount of information from your AdSense reports.  But you won't be able to see e.g. what search terms were used to find your page.

You can get way more control and statistics, while still being able to get AdSense revenue, by just setting up your own personal pages on a webserver, or by using other sites that give you more flexibility in content creation (e.g. permitting JavaScript).  They make a big deal about a Knol being attached to an author.  Well for one, my Wikipedia edits are already attached to my user name, and for two, what's more personal than publishing something under my own name in my own web domain instead?

It seems to me this is mostly about ads, and secondarily about drawing you even further into the web tracking dream: you're always logged into Google, they know every search you make, every email and document, and now they will know your particular areas of expertise, and topics of interest.  Seems like lots of benefits for Google...

Comments

[Berci Mesko]

I have one line for you: You're absolutely right!