It is rather amusing watching heads explode all over the Internet about Google’s latest change and the cries of “OMG I do not write on content farms”. Think again! One of the broad definitions of “farming” is “grow a particular crop” … well what do you think that a content farm is? It GROWS CONTENT. Hundreds (or thousands) of writers are given free rein to provide content that may or may not be well written with little (or no) editorial control. That my friends is the definition of a content farm.
While Google may not have captured ALL content farms, sites that most of us know (and many of us write to) ARE content farms whether we feel like they are or not. Sites that provide content for the sole purpose of generating revenue from advertising are by their nature content farms. They sow seeds to attract advertisements and attract readers who will read advertisers. It is rather ironic that Google who provides such programs as AdSense and AdWords is deciding that these “content farms” which THEY are actually responsible for creating is now penalizing them for doing exactly what they encourage sites to do – add new content on a regular basis to attract readers and increase advertising revenue. How weird is that?
For online writers, there are hundreds of sites that allow them to post un-moderated and unedited articles. Like it or not, these sites include Suite 101, Helium, Squidoo, Hub Pages and more. Most writers can log into any one of these sites today, open an account and within hours have their first published “work” regardless of how relevant it is. Sure, some of these sites practice SOME editorial control, Suite 101 does require a new writer to have their work reviewed and approved by an editor prior to publishing, Helium has an editor review the article and even Squidoo and Hub Pages have some “rules” for posting. This does not make them immune to the content farm tag.
This author’s opinion is this: If a site is paying a writer in page view income and has little (or no) editorial process then it’s a content farm. Plain and simple. Keep something in mind — Google stated that the reason behind clamping down on content farms was to allow “more relevant” information to rise to the top. The problem is that search engines are by nature (regardless of the tweaks put into them) programmed to search out KEY WORDS in an article, document or topic. Therefore it stands to reason that unless some highly motivated person is reading EVERY SINGLE SEARCH RESULT that the person using the most relevant keywords in their urls and titles, they are NOT going to show up in the search engine AT ALL. Think I’m wrong? Do yourself a favor and type in any keyword phrase you want. Then play with the Advanced Features in Google and tell me I’m wrong.
Have fun — I’m planning on continuing my writing for content farms unless my earnings tank to 0. See you there!
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