Organic Response

Google has announced the very early stages of an online platform for the contribution of knowledge, similar to Seth Godin’s, Squidoo, launched back in 2005. Google’s new tool is called Knol, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Its goal is to allow authors to write articles on any topic in hopes that the article will become an authoritative resource of information. Each article will contain images, references, reviews, questions, and additional content.

While Knol’s model is extremely similar to Squidoo’s, it appears that Google is taking more a scholarly approach to the dissemination of information. Squidoo encourages any and all to create “lenses” about their passion, while it appears that Google is hoping that already established doctors, scientists, and authors will put their name on the line to give the “knol” authority from the start.

Godin appears to welcome the Big Gun into the space, stating in his blog “The nature of the Web, though, seems to be that because of the very openness of the system, imitation is the highest form of endorsement.”

Although, in response to Udi Manber’s posting about why Google is launching Knol ( “We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that.”), Godin did turn the sample knol into a Squidoo lense, stating “It didn’t take very long.”

Its hard to blame the guy for being a little perturbed. After all, Google will make sure that Knols more than sprinkles the search engine results, which will eventually cut into the growth of Squidoo. With that said, Godin is one of the smartest marketers/2.0 thinkers I have come across, and there is not doubt in my mind that he will give Google a run for their money.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements are all welcome…

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While I was hoping to create a wiki as an extension of my site, my lack of patience and programming skills lead me to launch a free version at http://organicresponse.wikidot.com/. My intention with this wiki is to create a platform that houses a robust library of resources related to the interactive space . I laid the foundation of the wiki by uploaded several sections from my whitepaper, in hopes that they will provide an adequate launching pad for a flourishing of information, opinions, and innovation on the evolving World Wide Web. Below are the different sections of the wiki so far. Any input is welcome and appreciated. Happy Wikiing!!!

• Search Engines – A Brief HistoryWeb 2.0 – The New Internet

• Web 2.0 – The Technical Landscape

• SEO Link Strategy in Web 2.0

• Social Media Optimization – A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

• Usability vs. Searchability – The RIA Search Challenge

• Googles Personalized Search – The End of Traditional SEO?

• Search Behavior R&D – Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords

I’ve been researching the best way to add a wiki to my website, and so far I have not been impressed. I want to host the wiki on my site so the domain looks like wiki.organicresponse.com or organicresponse.com/wiki. While I’m sure it would be a worthwhile skill to have I’m not trying to take the time to learn a programming language like Ruby to build the wiki. I’ve looked at Wetpaint, Wikispaces, Pbwiki, and Editme. They all have a monthly fee of atleast $10 to have your own domain. Why aren’t wikis as available as blogs? Are they just not mainstream enough, so the demand isn’t there? Is the programming that much more complicated than a weblog? Any insight into this matter would be greatly appreciated. Or if you have any recommendations for how this non-techy guy can create a wiki on my site without paying a monthly fee.

When you first create a webpage, say your homepage, think of it as an empty container. When an external webpage directs a link to your homepage, think of it as them attaching a tube from their container to your container. Within that tube flows a one way current of liquid, or “link juice,” that pours into your container. When you build out your website with additional pages linked from your homepage, the link juice flows from your homepage through these tubes and into these containers (pages). By receiving more links from external pages you are increasing the sources from which you are getting your link juice, which you then pass internally to other pages within your site. By linking outside your site you are essentially leaking some of your juice with each external link. This leaking of link juice is not, however, a bad thing as long as you link to pages relevant to the topic of your site. What does hurt your link juice supply significantly, however, is having your links point to dead pages (404 Not Found). When you link to a dead page your juice is spilling out of your containers, and effectively diminishing your link juice.

A commonly practiced SEO tactic to ensure that your flow of link juice is not being directed to useless or hurtfull places is called PageRank sculpting. This is the use of the rel=”nofollow” attribute in the html code when linking to another site, or to an internal page of lower priority, like a privacy or terms and conditions page. Here is what the tag would look like in the page’s source:

<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.site.com/page.html” >Visit My Page</a>

So think about your links as tubes with valuable juice flowing through them and hopefully this whole linking thing will make a little bit more sense. You are welcome add to this discussion by describing ways that help YOU better visualize linking and other structural website concepts.