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Google’s Knol Chooses Phone Verification to Verify Authors

By Tim Paulino  -  July 28, 2008

Google officially launched Knol, a new service aimed to compete with Wikipedia. In short, Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.

Google knows Wikipedia’s biggest weakness is its accuracy. Since anyone can contribute to an article, it reduces the authoritativeness of the article. So how is Google responding to this? According to Google, they believe letting authors verify their name (meaning it’s not required) helps to increase creditability and trustworthiness in the eyes of the readers.

So how is Google going to verify names?

There are two main ways Google will attempt to verify an author’s name. One is verification by phone number and the other is verification by credit card. For verification by phone number, Google will securely pass the author’s name to a telephone directory database to check the author name against the name on record associated with the telephone number given. It those match, Google will then give you a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) for use in the verification process. To do this, they’ll use telephone verification to send an automated phone call to the telephone number given asking the author to key in the PIN code. Once the correct PIN is entered, the author will be verified. There are some limitations however. The author must have a phone number in their name and use of rotary phone VoIP numbers and extensions may not work.

For verification by credit card, Google will securely pass the author’s verification information to a third party credit bureau, which will confirm that the author’s information matches in their database. The credit card is not charged, it simply submits an “inquiry” to the credit profile. No one looks at any credit rating information or specific financial information in connection with the verification. Google will not see or have access to an author’s credit profile or other credit bureau information. Instead, the credit bureau will simply provide Google with a status indicator to let them know whether or not the information matched their records.

For more information about Google’s name verification system, visit the Knol FAQ.

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