Extended: Google Knol to WordPress migration

One of our friend,client and acclaimed wisdom writer Mr Sajid Ali Khan (NY,USA) suggested us to write down all our technical knowledge to help Knol authors community.

Follow our another post for more information about issues and update regarding Knol to WordPress migration

As we have also written some helpful posts for Google Knol migration, this post will be more extended and detailed version and answers lots of questions, All the questions are answered on our experience with this industry for past 7 years and all views are our personal. We are trying to answer as simple as we can and If you have any more questions and if anything looks more technical in nature , please comment at last of this page … be assured we will get you an answer.

=> Why Google is shutting down Knol.

Google has started Knol as Wikipedia competitor to produce quality collaborative articles but unfortunately with time the Knols have been turned in Content Farms ( Content farms where people, companies post lots of redundant/duplicate content to take benefit of search engine algos to generate pageviews/ revenue from advertisements ).  With recent update to search algorithm Google panda , Google tried to deal with content farms to improve search algorithm , so a cut to Knol. Also Google’s newly appointed CEO Larry Page.. want to focus and invest resources on core and productive business , so they are shutting down and killing services.

=> How it will impact Knol authors

Google cared for you , Google knows that there are so many great knol authors and great articles out there.. so they partnered with WordPress and came up with  Annotum platform where Knol authors can migrate all their Knols and link and redirect the Urls . Those who don’t.. WordPress is world’s most popular blogging platform and it is running on Millions of websites and most of the big newspapers and magazine’s use WordPress to power their site.. and there is reason that Google trusted them.

=> Why they are not migrating Knols to blogger

This is a tough question to answer, but what I think is Knol was meant for Collaborative approach.. where as blogger is more towards blogging and focusing more on one on one.. that’s the reason Google is also not migrating knols directly to WordPress ( Which is also a blogging platform by nature), they created one more layer Annotum with WordPress to make it collaborative.

=> How I will migrate to WordPress

You can follow this post to know more http://expressin.net/voluntary-help-to-google-knol-users-to-wordpress-migration-272/ and there are lots of official resources to help you with it http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/google-knol-wordpress-annotum/

But some more details…  Google provide a service called Google takeout (dataliberation).. which allows you to download all your data you have with Google (contact,profile,picasa all) from http://google.com/takeout so you can download all your Knols too.  But if you download directly from there everything will come in raw html form and different files as per knols.. WordPress,blogger no one can read this format.. so they have created the automatic migration tool which make the process smooth and also the automatic redirection from Knol to WordPress…

The automatic migration will be done in single file.. so if you have 100 knols.. all will be migrated to WordPress in once.. but don’t worry then you can go to WordPress and delete or make some unpublished  if you want.

Note: The automatic migration process will migrate all your post pictures, visitors comments also, so nothing to loose

=> What’s the redirection, what needs to be done

URL_redirection  in simple words in context with Knol and WordPress will allow you to let visitor, search engines and everyone know that you have migrated to WordPress. It is required, else how will your visitors and search engine will know that your content is moved some where else.. if there is no proper redirection you will loose your visitors as well as search engines… Google and WordPress are allowing automatic as well as manual redirection for Knols during the automatic migration process

Very important…. Search engines hate duplicate content.. so if you have migrated to WordPress but no redirection on Knol.. search engine will see other as duplicate content and reduce your website reputation and ranking.. so be careful.. and some authors put the same thing on blogger , their personal website… thinking that they will get more page views.. believe me  it will harm badly in long run. ( The basic SEO).. always try to make your content original and at one place.

=> I want to migarate  Knols to Blogger or is there any other Google service I can use

Unfortunately there is no official way to migrate to Knols, but once you migrate to WordPress using automatic tools then you can export your knols from WordPress to blogger format and then import it there.. it will Work same

Some people has tweaked the raw individual html files download from http://google.com/takeout and uploaded it on bloggers but that is very time consuming will require lot of manual work and you will loose the content.. so be careful.. The correct way to do it is first import it to WordPress and then export from WordPress to blogger

There is one more Google wiki service http://sites.google.com, which allows to collaboratively  publish articles, notes.. but there are lot of limitations.. so we don’t suggest it.. but think there is something that’s why Google is moving you on WordPress.

=> What if I want to move my Knols to my own personal website ( my own domain and web hosting)

There are two ways, one you can directly download all your raw html from http://google.com/takeout and upload it to your own site.. but it will not allow you the simple publishing and interaction platform for you and your visitors.. so the other way is WordPress comes free.. so you can upload the WordPress on your website and then import the knols there.. there are lot more technical things involved with it.. but those are beyond the scope of this post.. email us .. we will help you with that.

Hope this will help Knol authors with their queries.. if there is any thing else .. please comment below… we will answer it