Content By the People, For the People

If you’re interested in learning more about white tigers, chances are you’ll refer to Wikipedia. If you want to learn the meaning of “perspicacious,” you may look it up on Wictionary.com. It’s amazing how we can find information on even the most obscure topics with just a few typed words and a couple of clicks. What’s more, we’re obtaining this information from each other -- from a content base built by the people, for the people.

There are several growing trends in user-based content. One of the most recent developments is Google Knol. Introduced in December 2007, Knol is a collaboration of articles submitted by users. The articles are informative in nature; however, unlike Wikipedia, they incorporate personal opinions on various topics. Other prominent article sites that emphasize ownership are Squidoo, Ezinearticles, and Helium.

An obvious use of user-generated content is the search engine. However, it is becoming more common for search engines to pull content directly from their own user “knowledge bases.” For example, China’s leading search engine, Baidu, includes a collaboratively-built encyclopedia and discussion forum – both searchable and keyword-based. Taking things a step further, the Mahalo engine utilizes human editors to review sites and write search engine results pages for popular queries. Korea’s leading search engine, Naver, is famous for its “knowledge search” -- similar to the question-and-answer model of Yahoo Answers.

Besides Yahoo Answers, a multitude of other question-and-answer sites are becoming popular. Among them are wiki.answers.com and chacha.com. The sites share a similar model, allowing users to post a question, answer a question, or rate another user’s answer.

The list can go on and on. However, it’s clear that user-generated content is the wave of the future. It is changing the way we find information, and it is no doubt having a considerable impact on search engine marketing. Reliability, relatability, and sociability all play a factor in explaining why sometimes, the best answers come from within.