Does Google Rank Knol Pages Too High?

Now that we've had the weekend to play around with Google's new "Wikipedia killer," Knol, I've run across some interesting claims. Several people have reported that their Knols were ranked unusually high in search results. In fact, Aaron Wall found that if he duplicated his own content, it ranked higher in Google search results than the previous content.

Now it could be that there are very legitimate reasons for the Knol article to rank higher than the previous content. There may be a lot of links coming from other sources, and it is certainly fresher content. However, Aaron Wall brings up the valid concern that this sort of ranking boost may encourage thieves to pollute Knol with content they've stolen.

Ironically, my problem with Knol has been the exact opposite. Over the weekend, my husband wrote some bread recipe Knols. They're published and public, but nowhere to be found in search, even from within Knol. Apparently it is a known issue.

How sad is it when a Google product has trouble with search?

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