Is Google Knol the new pharma spam box?

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:14:42 -0700

Members of The Wikipedia Review forums noted that there appears to be a concentration of Knol articles centered around the area of medical knowledge, and suspect it may come from the same source as that spam in your junk email folder: pharmaceutical sales companies.

While some may hope that the articles are really posted by altruistic medical professionals willing to spend their free time educating the common man on Knol for pennies in AdSense share, the more cynical posters think its just spam. They are both wrong; it's spam, but not the kind the posters were thinking. Most of the highest-rated articles don't seem close to the pharmaceutical companies' usual style nor original professional writing.

Instead, these Knol contributors have figured out that Knol gives them a Google boost for the same text they've already been posting on splogs all along. Some of the highest paying search terms are those that relate to medical conditions, and there's an entire splogging industry that exists just to net that ad share. One article on gastroesophageal reflux disease, authored by the anonymous "Reflux Guide," has a rating of the full five stars on Knol, yet a quick Google search shows that the text is virtually identical to at least two other sites loaded with AdSense posts and affiliate links, one a direct copy in Spanish. In addition, the "similar content on the Web" links in the Knol article go directly to the Spanish-language site, a splog hosted on Google's Blogger service, and a third AdSense farm hosted at a .info domain.

If Google wants Knol to be taken seriously, the amount of spam needs to be contained. Their own search engine shows duplicate text, yet articles are at the top of the rating scale, the alleged best Knol has to offer.

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