Google’s latest hit is Knol, but it doesn’t own Knol.com.
Google employees some wicked smart people. So why can’t it figure out this whole naming and domain thing?
First it released Google Adsense. There was already a marketing company using the domain Adsense.com. (Ironically, that company was turned down when it applied to join Google’s Adsense program.) Then it bought YouTube, which sent a heck of a lot of traffic to uTube.com.
Now Google has opened up its wikipedia like service Knol to the masses. Where do you go to find Google’s Knol? You can find it at knol.google.com. Knol.com is owned by a Netherlands company that sells steam cleaning equipment. And it is now experience a surge of traffic.
In December, when Google announced a closed version of Knol, Knol.com received tens of thousands of visitors. And at least one person inquired about buying the domain. Here’s what the company wrote on its web site at the time, translated loosely with the help of Google’s Toolbar:
On a blog from Google published an article which reported that Google was working on Knol. This is a kind of combination of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia personal paginabouwer Squidoo.
Knol is an abbreviation for “knowledge”, speaking of “nol”. Now you will think what that has to do with Tuberous StoomreinigingsSystemen?
Well, from that Friday there is immediately a true run in areas that had the word “Knol” in itself, as also the domain knol.com.
This has resulted in tens of thousands of visitors who came to take a look at the website of Knol.com! In a short time we had received visitors from more than 130 countries from around the world.
Fortunately, the website was able to be able strongholds and the site remained in the air. But that was not in, we were also alleman by Jan and asked if we wanted to sell the domain. Unfortunately, we have to disappoint everyone, how beautiful their offerings sometimes has been.
The company has an update now that Knol is open to the public. According to the company traffic is spiking. Knoll.com is probably getting some traffic too. As for KnolGoogle.com? Google owns it.
Perhaps I should write a knol about product naming and domain names…
hennie meijer says
Jan en alleman stands for everybody(degrading), basicly it says they got requests to sell the site from many different people.(maybe you should suggest to them to put it up for auction and let google pay double of the highest bid)
Apart from leaving a note to google on the website, thanking them for the attention they received , the company now also thanks all kind of websites and bloggers reporting about the story, which also brought them extra traffic.(who knows domainnamewire may get mentioned next time you look).
The company is only active in The Netherlands and Belgium and the website is in Dutch only, traffic from 130 countries seems like a bit of waste for the time being.
They kind of acknowledge this by mentioning on one of their web pages that especially the domain got a lot of attention and not so much their products.There is no mention of them looking for agents in other countries either.
They may be planning all kinds of thing though,who knows.
Maybe they are just holding out for google to make an offer.
Apart from knol.com the company owns knol.nl as well.
Knol is a pretty common family name in the Netherlands(and Belgium, a Belgian family owns knol.be)
Wondering whether they could not make an effort to put up an English version of the site as well.
Andrew says
Thanks for the info. They’ll get some free press and inbound links, but it’s highly untargeted traffic. Much like utube, it’s probably more of a nuisance than a help.
matt says
And now former Google employees are off to a rocky start with their domain choice. Their new search engine is located at Cuil.com, pronounced “cool”.
Andrew says
Matt – I saw that over at ElliotsBlog. Crazy.
Steve M says
…and to add to the “cool” naming problem/ confusion, the AP’s news report on it says it’s spelled “cuill” (though they were apparently wise enough to grab that “misspelling” [wow–misspelling a misspelling] and forward it to cuil.com
M. Menius says
Geesh! “Knowledge.info” is available at a decent price. What’s with “Knol”. Completely counter-intuitive.
hennie meijer says
Seen on a forum:
“It was on the news here in Holland, TV, newspaper, online, everywhere
Google is offering Hilco Knol, the owner of Knol.com which is his familyname. for “5 zeros “. but he turned it down. He said, will consider offer only from “6 zeros”
He regged this name in 2002 for his shop which sells vacuum cleaners and stuff .
He lives in a small city called Dordrecht, south of Rotterdam”
He stated in the tv-interview that he reckoned that building up his name in the past(marketing costs) did cost him a 5 zero amount number already.
English Translation says
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