Google announced this morning that Knol is opened to everyone. Knol is a Google Product similar to Wikipedia. Google describes Knol as "authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects."

The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that the author's name is public behind the content. This solves many of the conflicts Wikipedia has experienced with credibility and accuracy. If an author is required to display his/her name, then it is their reputation on the line, and their edits, voice, and opinion are made public.

Many social networks or collaborative sites have a sort of community code or etiquette. For instance, there are "rules" to Wikipedia entries. Writing your company's entry or editing a competitor's entry is very much frowned upon. On Digg, it really doesn't pay to Digg your own articles or have all of your coworkers Digg your stuff. Votes from the same IP address are noted, and taken action upon.

I was fishing around to understand Knol's guidelines or best practices, and they do have a "content policy" that is helpful.

Knol apparently encourages voicing your opinion, and I suppose the safety net to this acceptance is the fact that the author's name and information are up front.

So what if Knol becomes stuffed with opinions and rants instead of actual facts and expertise? My guess is that it will be filled with both, but I hope Google will find a way to categorize or give authority to certain authors.

The guideline I find interesting is:
"COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY: You may use Knol to create articles for your business or to promote your lawful products or services that are not otherwise prohibited by our Content Policy or Terms of Service, unless you are in Cuba, Iran, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, Syria, or Sudan. There are some commercial uses we don’t allow. We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website. We also don’t allow Knol pages that have the primary purpose of profiting from displaying ads from any publisher network, such as pages created with little or no unique content that exist only to display ads."

It will be interesting to see how search engine optimization consultants negotiate these rules, and what kind of results they can get by skirting them.

Social media and blogging has an amazing reach, and I'm happy that Michelle Obama has decided to embrace the platform. Michelle posted today about her husband and the election on BlogHer.com. It is easy to tune out news that seems like old news when it is just election information rehashed and overly dissected, but as Michelle Obama engages the online community I listened.

While it is commendable that Michelle is working to engage, listen, and become a voice in the BlogHer community, I was disappointed that her post didn't "get" blogging.

Many of the phrases she used I have heard over and over on the news and on Obama ads. I was excited to read about Michelle's personal experiences, and get an insider's view on the election, but surprise!--it fell a little short of the candor I think people desire from a blog. She wrote for her audience, but almost played to exactly what they would want to her. Nothing is wrong with that, but I wish she could have stayed away from the cookie cutter language.

An example of what I wish her post could have been was actually in the comments:

"Michelle -
Thank you from me, and my daughter. I'm stealing a chance to tell you something that my daughter said.  She is almost 10, and this is the first presidential election she has followed - obviously.  She was an Obama supporter long before I was, while I was still on the fence. But we had great talks she and I about everyone running and what they were saying and the world we wanted to live in.  It was historic, really, but very personal, to realize that my daughter's first election was, to her, between a black man and a woman. I've been in awe of that. When I told her how important that was to me, she just laughed and said, "Jeesh mom, they're just people!"

I cried.  "MOM!" I'm sorry, it's a big deal. But when I asked her why she was such a strong Obama supporter, she said it was because he made her feel good. In discussion, it turned out that she meant that when she hears him speak, she feels hopeful, like she wants to do better, she feels inspired.  I told her that I wasn't sure that was enough of a reason to vote for someone. She reminded me that I always tell her that if you BELIEVE you can do something, than you can, and that when you make people feel good, they are more willing to help you. She informed that that's what he does. Her contention was that inspiring us all to believe we can make a better world, and making us ALL part of the process was, in fact, good enough.

I love it when my baby girl makes things that simple, and that right.

But what really won her over, apparently, were you and your daughters.  "They look like they could be our friends, ya know?" Um hm. I do know. Welcome in to our lives Michelle. Thank you for just being one of us. Amazing it took a 10 year old to make it clear how much that means, but it does.....

Thank you."

This comment was vastly more powerful than Michelle's actual post. Until politics aren't politics as usual, I'm not sure if blogs and social media are a great fit as a political podium or megaphone, but maybe politics could use a dose of the honesty cultivated in blogs.

Yesterday Google announced their release of Lively - "a 3D virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs."

It seems this is Google's version of Second Life, but the rooms you build can have YouTube videos running on virtual TVs and photos scrolling in virtual picture frames.

It is Google's hope that Lively "will help people experience another dimension of the web." Lively should "help people express [themselves] with and without words, and do this in the places [they] already visit on the web.

Google apparently worked with Arizona State University to develop Lively.

Unfortunately to run Lively you have to have a Windows system.

Do they really use Windows at Googleplex?? I would think a 3D world would look a lot more impressive on a Mac.

Here is another great explanation of Lively.

A Video from the Official Google Channel on YouTube:

Last Wednesday I attended an Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association meeting entitled-- Search Marketing: Finding the Value Beyond the Online Click to Conversion. Moderating the talk was John Cattarulla Director, Strategic Accounts, Yahoo! The panelists included:

Ron Belanger
VP of Agency Development, Yahoo!

Roku Coryne
Senior Metrics Consultant, Google

Jason Fisher
Group Director, 360i

Ron Belanger from Yahoo! began by explaining that when employing search marketing we want to put products in the path of search behavior.

He did a great job of looking at Search in an nontraditional way. I was prepared to hear a little more about search engine optimization tips, but he talked more about using Search in a social media/public relations sort of way. I think this is a good indicator that the delineation of business, marketing, advertising and public relations is blurring more every day.

Belanger discussed the need for organizations providing its customers' support online. He calls this a post-purchase opportunity to maintain a relationship with the customer. When your customer has a question about your product they will likely turn to the Internet to research the answer. You want your organization to be first with the answer. What a great way to convey your organization's messages first and upfront.

He also discusses a case study from Hellmann's Mayonnaise. They partnered with Yahoo! and used search in a campaign to change the perception of mayo. They wanted to banish the bad rap of mayonnaise (particularly Hellmann's) and educate their public that mayo is in fact a "real food" with "real ingredients." When one searches "real food" in Yahoo! Hellmann's Yahoo Real Food Group appears at the top of the search results (paid and unpaid). It is a social network that allows users to trade recipes, discuss health topics, and view videos. I can't remember the exact numbers, but overall it was a very successful campaign.

Raku Coryne's presentation was very entertaining! She attributed many of her ideas to Avinash Kaushik, and likened bounce rate to scent. Scent in the way a bloodhound finds its prey. If a bounce rate is high it has no scent. It doesn't have the stickiness factor to retain visitors, and then you have a problem.

She also said Kaushik likes to compare Web analytics to Angelina Jolie. "Web Analytics is like Angelina Jolie: It’s sexy, it kicks butt, and is a goodwill ambassador!"

Coryne said that she liked to compare Web analytics to Oprah. She said bounce rate is like Oprah because it can tell a good story.

She also explained the importance of two numbers: 4 and 25.

4 words= average number of words in a search engine query
25% of search in Google each day have never been searched before

From this she explained Chris Anderson's Long Tail.

She also said Web analytics were useful in eliminating the HIPPO. The Highest Paid Person's Opinion. She said the HIPPO often makes decisions based on his/her opinion, and that Web analytics eliminated this. One cannot argue with the information and statistics gathered from Web analytics. If the HIPPO likes one landing page, but users liked the other (tracked with Web analytics) the right answer is obviously the landing page that actually worked.

I found it very useful to think about search in a creative way. You must have a general idea for how it works if you are using it in a campaign, but it has many applications other than just "being number one." I also like how Coryne presented metrics as non-intimidating. It really helps to know that the simplest metrics can be the most telling and actionable.

For more information and pictures, check out Dan Greenfield's post about the meeting. I came upon it after doing a search on the meeting's topic-- how appropriate.

How often do you use Google (the search engine and its products) during your day? For me, the number is pretty ridiculous.

Will Google execute its master plan and take over the world continue to dominate search forever? Reports liken search and Google to advertising and television. Before cable TV there were a couple major networks that dominated the advertising dollars. Then cable created niche networks and gave viewers more choices. Advertisers loved it because they could focus their campaigns and viewers loved it because they had a choice.

Not to say searchers don't currently have alternative search methods, but as search is expanded and refined I think the little guys can collectively chip away at Google's market share.

Speaking of refined, alternative search methods, here is a list of engines I'm keeping an eye on:

Results Displayed Visually

Quintura

This search engine allows you to visually refine your search. I like that you can narrow your search down then glance at the narrowed results, and then if you don't like what you see you can just move the mouse, and your original results reappear. In other words you don't have to navigate away from the results page to refine your search results.

Kartoo

Kartoo also allows your to visually refine your search, but it shows screen shots of the sites as you rollover a result. The results are visually displayed as a map that is linked together by the terms that refine them. Their mascot also "surfs the web" as your results are being generated.

Searchme

Searchme also displays your results visually, and allows you to refine by vertical search category (images, movies, web). The results are displayed in a "stack" and if you like the stack you can save it to peruse later.

Viewzi

Viewzi allows you to choose how to display your results. They have several views to choose from. The site information view provides a lot of useful site information about the site you query, but I'm not sure how accurate some of the data is. Nonetheless it is an interesting approach to search.

Niche Search Engines:

Truila-- Real Estate

Healthline-- Healthcare

Like-- Shopping

Globalspec-- For engineering, industrial and technical communities

Spock-- People Search

Blinkx-- Rich media search engine. From their website, "Unlike other multimedia search engines that attempt to re-purpose technology built for the Text Web, blinkx uses a unique combination of patented conceptual search, speech recognition and video analysis software to efficiently, automatically and accurately find and qualify online video. Today, blinkx is the world’s largest single index of rich media content on the Web, delivering more content from a broader range of sources than either Google or Yahoo!"

Community Search/Human Edited-Search:

Del.ici.ous

The idea is for you to search other people's bookmarks. You are basically searching others' favorite results of the query.

Squidoo

Members create a "lens" about something they are an expert on. You can search the database for entries that match your query.

Wikipedia

Anyone can add, edit, or contribute to the encyclopedia's entries.

Sproose

From their website, "How Sproose works...Machine Calculated Results => Sproose Users Vote Websites => User Improved Results"

Mahalo

Mahalo actually builds search results pages themselves. From their website, "Search results built internally by our full time staff are checked by other Full Time Guides and our editors. We also have a place on every page where you, the public, can report problems or errors with our pages. Our Guides then check these errors and correct them. Additionally, we have a dead link checker which helps us remove links that are no longer functioning and a full time team watching the news to make sure that every hot search term or news item is updated quickly."

Google bought Israeli Search Engine Orion.

Google bought Kaltix, a three-month-old, three-man Stanford startup that's working on personalized and context-sensitive search.

Google acquired a key player in face and image recognition biometrics, Neven Vision.