One of the big questions about Google Knol is about its impact on SEO. Specifically, how will knols rank in search engine results? Google has a long (though imperfect tradition) of ‘not being evil’. But, as many have pointed out, the Knol project puts them in both the content creation and delivery businesses. The temptation to abuse that scenario and reap the benefits of more ad revenue must be extraordinarily high.

Mind you, there’s a watchful and robust search community that will be watching Google like a bunch of nerdy hawks.

That community has been running some early experiments on Knol and it’s SEO potential. Danny Sullivan randomly selected thirty knols that had been listed on the Google Knol front page, and assessed how they’d done in search rankings:

OK, so 10 of the 30 — 33% of what I looked at — hit the top ten or first page of results. You can spin that both ways. It’s proof that being in Knol is NOT an automatic ride to the top of the search results. But then again, knowing that 33% of your stuff will rank within a day is a pretty good track record.

O