Jul 29
Automated Article Generation and Spamming Google Knol
Over at Mashable, Mark has written an article pointing out that, only three days after Knol’s release, nefarious SEO types are experimenting with ways to spam Knol:
The time for speculation as to when this will occur, though, is past. A while back I somehow got subscribed to a list belonging to a maker of splog automation software by the name of Peter Drew. He’s since moved to the semi-legitimate world of automated article creation software, but relies on very suspect methods of revenue, affiliate marketing and SEO generation to promote his software.
This morning I received the URGENT ALERT that a mere three days after the launch of Google’s Knol, he’s already created an automated Knol article generator.
I’m not sure that ‘automated article creation’ qualifies even as ’semi-legitimate’. Nonetheless, Mr. Drew has developed a piece of software colourfully named the Badass Google Knol Dominator. Here’s an introductory video:
It’s basically an automatic article submitter. Which, on the surface, doesn’t seem that problematic. However, as Mark from Mashable points out:
As you can tell, the purpose of this software isn’t to create valuable “Knol units” or to spread the altruistic dream of free knowledge for all, but to create Knols with the purpose to squat on as much namespace as possible while attempting to reap the rewards of high value links from the Google domain these articles will sit on.
Obviously spam is going to be a huge problem for Google Knol to deal with. I note, for example, that the first Knol on Digg that I found is copied verbatim from the Wikipedia article on the same topic.
I don’t know much about anti-spam tactics, but I assume there are some pretty simple strategies to block tools like Mr. Drew’s. Captchas would probably be effective, as would some kind of restriction on the number of submissions per hour.
People are going to try to game Knol just as they try to game every other money or link generating site on the web. It’s just the latest chapter in an arms race between companies and the parasitical strategies people employ to exploit them. Google has lots of experience to bring to bear on the problem, so I expect they’ll do a decent (though imperfect) job of separating the wheat from the chafe.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Peter Drew already posesses technology to defeat captchas. They’ve been packaged in previous versions of his various splog automation software (and has successfully defeated both gmail account creation captchas as well as blogger captchas).
July 30th, 2008 at 3:49 am
Yes, it didn’t take long - no great susrprise!
I noticed two interesting phenomena yesterday - the first was that on one of my Google Knols, a link under the heading “Duplicate Content on the Web” appreared (see ) which highlighted the fact that an article I had added to Google Knol was “75% similar” to content inside a PDF file on one of my web sites that I had allowed Google’s earch engine to spider. So Knol does have the ability to spot duplicate content, and flag it up. If you look at your Digg article, you can see the following to the right:
Similar Content on the Web
medlibrary.org 100%
wikipedia.org 100%
w2n.net 99%
The other fact was soemone joining my network at KnolRoll who has written a guide called The Internet Marketers Report on How to make money Writing Knols with The Knol™ Project. Note the use of Trademark™ to add credibility. The biography leads to the inevtiable ‘long copy’ sales page with a special offer for the first 100 people to respond, and yes it’s now only $29.99, and includes these fabulous nuggets of information: -
* Getting to Know The Knol Project - This section of the report is designed to take you from being clueless to clued up on what it is you are working with
* How to share in Google’s Profits - Find out how to utilise Google’s AdSense Projet for the first stream and publicly promoted stream of income.
* How to Select Profitable Areas - Learn what makes one Knol more profitable than another so you can back a winner every time!
* How to Get other people writing for your gain - The Industry secret that allows you to Take all the credit for somebody elses work and still get paid time and time again!
* Gain Credibility as an Expert in your Field - You will find out how to position yourself as as an expert in a field to Skyrocket your Success!
* How to start Earning Today! - This entire report is set to equip you with the tools and expertise to Take Action & Profit With Knols Today!
Yadda yadda. You get the idea.
Regards, David
July 30th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I’ve written several knols in the past few days but none of them appear when I search for them. When I went to the Knol help page, Google’s Michael McNally had a rather cryptic response to this issue:
“Yes, that has been the initial experience - and the #1 complaint we hear. The search experience on knol.google.com will change over time. We will add additional means for discovering knols. Sorry if I cannot be more specific.
For now, you should be able to find your own knols when you are logged in, and you can send your URLs of your published knols to your friends, who will be able to see them when they navigate to the link you provided.”
Funny, I don’t think that is what Knol contributors had in mind.
Micheal McNally, the Google guy, goes on to refer readers to another page to get more info about the factors that will go into site position of Knols. However, the Google URL he provided leads to a “Page Not Found” message.
This is a topic for you stay on top of, I think. Here’s the URL to page with McNally’s comments:
http://knol.google.com/k/michael-mcnally/knol-bugs-and-work-arounds/1ng4pryc7bgdb/6#
July 30th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Thanks for the tips, all. That’s very nefarious on the captcha-foiling. I suspected as much. Is Google going to need a Wikipedia-like army of editors to keep on top of these stuff?