Knol contributors have split into distinct groups. Where as some people are contributing their knowledge for the greater good, others are exploring ways of exploiting the service, for profit, search engine position, or simply self promotion.

Spam isn’t the right word to describe all of the content being added, and the use of link=nofollow seems to have kept the spammers who frequent Blogger away so far. Instead, much of the content is trying to hide self promotion and links by using informative articles…well informative to some, in a similar way commonly found on Ezine Article sites.

Others seem to be adding pages of rubbish (for example this entry on WordPress) in an attempt to gain authority on Knol through their volume of contributions.

Then there are those targeting content in high paying keywords, for example adding Knol entries on terms such as Insurance, their goal being not to provide the best knowledge on the service, but to get high paying clicks via the ads Google show on each page. There’s even a blog dedicated to doing just that.

There aren’t millions of rubbish pages yet, but as more people notice that Knol articles are ranking well in Google search results, the landrush to profit from Knol will accelerate. Google may say it cares about spam on Knol, but it has said that repeatedly about Blogger as well, and we all know how much spam you can find there.

Related posts:

1. Excellent news: you can now spam Knol in foreign languages
2. Google Suffers Knol Geofriendly Verification Fail
3. Google adds Magazines to Google Book Search

Google launched its long hyped Wikipedia competitor Knol earlier today, but despite being open for editing by all, not all users are being treated equally.

Unlike Wikipedia, Knol works around user identities, both with user profile pages, and through the URL structure. For example, here is my profile page, and here’s my page on blogs, both with my name in the URL. Google is promoting the tie-in to profiles as a way to enable experts on particular topics to be easily identified, and couples the profiles with a verification process to make sure the person writing entries is who they say they are. And this is where Knol turns into a two class process.

To verify a user name on Knol, users must verify their account by phone or credit card. I sort of expected Knol to exclude non-US phone verification, so that wasn’t a surprise, but the rule applies for credit cards as well. US credit card or cell, or no verification. Canadians are excluded as well.

To try and be a little fair to Google, the service is brand new, and perhaps the logistics of providing verification to the whole planet may be a little challenging, but why implement a verification system at all when only users in the United States can use it? It’s not as if Knol is closed to contributions from outside of the United States. Instead, Knol contributors in the United States will now have an unfair advantage in contributions of others, and that does suck, even if its only a little bit.

I also don’t understand why in the last couple of years Google has moved from being an inclusive, global player with product launches to being one that excludes people outside of the United States. Google is so immensely popular today globally in part due to its inclusive global product launches where other companies have continued to remain focused on the United States (Yahoo in particular comes to mind).

Google may say Knol is open to everyone, but it’s a half arsed approach.

Related posts:

1. Google Knol starting to smell spammy
2. Excellent news: you can now spam Knol in foreign languages
3. Gmail Suffers 15-Hour Partial Fail