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Bye Bye Knol Pages

Google introduced its Knol pages in July 2008. Since then, there have been maybe 100,000 or so Knol pages created. Not that many by most standards. But just recently, Google has announced that come May 1, 2012, Knol pages will be going away.

That’s quite sad.

Pardon the sarcasm, but this isn’t the first Google product that has died a slow death. What is different about this particular Google product, however, is that it isn’t just dying. It’s changing form. That is, it’s taking up new ownership.

Not much appears to be changing except that Knol pages, or Annotum pages (or whatever they’ll be called), will exist on a different platform. They’ll be published on WordPress. That’s fine, WordPress is a good platform.

Other than the platform, I don’t see much that will be different. One question remains, however. Will links still be dofollow as they are now on Google Knol?

If the links aren’t dofollow, then they won’t provide a lot of SEO benefit to article marketers. Of course, that may not be the benefit that Annotum wants to convey to its audience. They appear to be interested in targeting the scientific and scholarly communities. That’s fine, and those communities may not be interested in SEO. As a business, however, you’ll want to know that your articles are producing a benefit to your business.

If you currently have any Knol pages, you have until May 1, 2012 to either export them to Annotum or download them for other uses. At this point, I’d say hold onto them until we know more about Annotum.