Sign up for Google’s Knol and you’ll think you are about to do something great. You’ll spend a couple hours writing a long article – or two, or 6… you’ll pour your heart into the articles. You’ll think – wow, this is awesome – Google is giving me a platform to write on… you’ll envision heaps of traffic and visitors and success and all of that.
And the content you just spent hours writing can be taken down in an INSTANT when a couple of your competitors flag it for removal.
Apparently it’s removed instantly without a review – or a reason. Google says – they don’t review them they just refer you back to their “best practices” page so you can look through every item and try to guess which one of them you violated… I’ve seen this Google tactic before with Adsense – they’ll kill your entire Adsense program because someone flagged your ads… and then not tell you why.
Here’s exactly what they say about telling you what they found and the reason for removing Knol content:
My content was flagged and removed. Can you tell me specifically what content was not acceptable?
Under most circumstances we will be unable to provide individual explanations of why specific content was taken down. We cannot provide any instructions on what will make content acceptable, beyond referring you back to this Content Policy document, and pointing to the examples on our Best Practices page as describing “ideal knols”. For general guidance on creating good web content, see Google’s Webmaster guidelines.
Yeah, thanks for the help! What a joke…
Welcome to Google – where we don’t care to give you a valid reason for removing your content or killing your Google Adsense accounts – we just do as we wish and you’ll all have to live with that. We’re too big to answer questions – just to humor ourselves and to pacify you we’ll refer you to our forums where you’ll find after 1-2 weeks of waiting for a response to your pleas for help – nobody answers your questions there either.
I love Google – nearly everything except their lack of help and response on nearly everything we NEED help and response for.
I’ll gladly pay for help and response – give me a price. How does a company like this function for so long without being responsible?
In fact – I’d pay $500 per year to have a contact I can email, chat with, or call anytime for problems I’m having with Google’s stupid policies. I’ve encountered wacky things like this for years now. It’s the source of endless frustration…
Not joking – I’ll pay $500.
Today.
Just give me a bill.
I’ll bet half of corporate America would pay to have someone they can get answers from at Google.
About Vern Lovic
Aloha! I'm "Vern". I created this site to focus on Hawaii - all the islands - Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Big Island and even Molokai and Lanai and Kahoolawe when I can find information on them. I love living in Hawaii, and I think you would too. I hope you come away with something positive as a result of visiting Aim for Awesome. Feel free to add comments or contact me through email. All written content on this site by Vern Lovic. Contact me at Google+. Best of Life to You in 2013 - Aloha!
