Google doing quality control on Knol articles?

Does your Knol pass muster? (Adapted from an image by Flikr user tnarik)

The other day I asked readers to pass along articles they'd written for Google's new Knol encyclopedia.  Several were kind enough to share their contributions.  What's odd is that almost a week later, eight of the 12 articles written by those contributors still have not appeared in Knol's search results -- nor does my excellent article on the smoothie machine show up when searched for within Knol. (Strangely, it appears when you do a Google search for it, though.) 

Here's a spreadsheet where I've tabulated the articles that people sent me and when, noting which show up in the Knol results, and which don't. If you have written any that aren't appearing in the Knol search, send them along and I'll add them to the list.

When I asked Google why it was taking so long for the articles to appear, a spokesperson wrote back the following:  "There may be a delay until knols appear in the search results at knol.google.com. This delay varies from one knol to another and is based on numerous factors."

Pretty vague, but the takeaway is clear: Unlike Wikipedia, Knol's articles are being put through some kind of quality control process before they're indexed, whether it's to suss out spam, copyrighted information, porn or maybe just poorly written prose.  Since Google won't elaborate, we're left to guess. Thing is, if you look at the articles on my spreadsheet, none of them are spammy, porny or badly written. So why, for instance, does this entry on Cambodia not show up in Knol's results, even though it was written last Thursday?

Google's reluctance to be transparent, while never surprising, is at least puzzling in this instance. This product has been positioned as a public information resource, created by public users. It would seem that both readers and contributors should have a basic sense of how their content is being treated.

Comments

[seo]

Google Knol is a good idea on which you can post quality article. It is quite new to me and I will try it And Lets see the result.

[Sarah Park]

When one of our popular health columnists, PJ Hamel, posted a knol on mastectomy (10 Tips From a Breast Cancer Survivor), the knol indexed within 30 minutes for both "breast cancer" and "mastectomy." Shortly thereafter, however, the post disappeared from all of the Knol search results and was not visible anywhere for about five days. The post reappeared today, but not in the seven searchable pages that are linked to from the home page. You can find it only in a secondary search.

Knol is still a black box -- and one with a questionable mission; one thing that stands out in terms of tactics is that people writing knols with H1 and H2 (titles and subtitles) are indexing higher than plain text entries and even appearing on the home page.

Sarah Park
Producer for MyBreastCancerNetwork.com / HealthCentral.com

[Sebastian Bassi]

I think it is a pure technical issue. They may have several servers and they can't sync them properly. I base this on the fact that sometimes the same search returns different results (it depends on witch server answer the query).

[anonymous]

You'll notice that their Scientology articles all got approved almost instantly, and the "positive" articles are listed at the top despite poor rankings on one of them.

[Jason Kincade]

Hi-

If you're still collecting Knols, I pasted mine in the URL: window above.

Thanks,
JQK