Sunday 23 January 2011

How Google’s New Hatred of “Content Farms” Could Rearrange the Media Business | BNET

Google’s announcement that it intends to start discriminating against content farms

in its search rankings will hold every web news and media content publisher spellbound until it becomes clear exactly how Google (GOOG) will define “content farm.” Infuriatingly, Google wasn’t completely clear on what it regards as a content farm.

If the definition were applied broadly it could spell ruin for sites that depend on search results rather than loyal readers for traffic. Those sites include:

  • Demand Media
  • Associated Content
  • Topix
  • Examiner
  • The Huffington Post

All the above brands, in one way or another, churn out endless stories, often of low quality, in hopes that their massive archive of content will attract search hits. On the web, traffic = ads in the sense that more traffic generates more ad clickthroughs and higher prices.

Dependent on Google

Many major news organizations will be equally anxious. Although the New York Times obviously gets a lot of readers because of its quality and authority, it’s an open secret that a significant chunk of its online readership ends up there by happenstance. They’re searching for information in Google and the best answer happens to be a Times story. In 2007, the Grey Lady’s mandarins were famously dismayed to learn how much of their traffic comes in randomly from search engines and not from self-identified Times readers.

How Google defines quality vs. content farm is, therefore, crucial to everyone in the media whose business model depends on selling advertising in front of a massive influx of search traffic. (BNET included, frankly.) Here’s what Google said:

… we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam [search results, not email] levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.

… we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.

My colleague Erik Sherman believes this could implode Demand Media, which produces a lot of slight content based on what editors believe will be heavily searched for. Indeed, today’s front-page feature on how to care for a dog in winter appears to be plagiarized in large part from this 2009 pet newsletter (Word doc link), which I found here. Demand has warned in its troubled IPO that it is heavily dependent on Google’s algorithms for traffic.

What does “low levels of original content” actually mean?

A broad definition would burst the content farm media bubble — there are far more news sites than consumers could possibly need — which has been growing the last few years. By the same token, such a move would leave legit news sites — such as the Times — riding higher in the rankings. Google could, in other words, kill off much of the competition that has vexed traditional media on the web in a single blow.

In that scenario the biggest worry would be for sites like AOL’s DailyFinance and WalletPop, which mix original content with blogged content. (Compare this and this for an example of what I’m talking about. My item on BNET was the original one, for what it’s worth.) If Google were to distinguish between “churnalism” and original reporting — even though churnalism is technically original writing and adds value for readers if it also brings in new perspectives — then some respected media companies such as AOL could see their online news experiments enter a brutal freefall, traffic-wise. Such a shakeout would be a long time in coming.

Alternatively, Google could simply tighten its definition to exclude scrapers and rebloggers who cut-and-paste material that someone else took time to develop. That would leave the current ecosphere largely intact — except for Topix, which seems to consist entirely of headlines grabbed from other media.

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Image by Flickr user photoclinique, CC.

via bnet.com

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