Google to crack down on “content farms”?
Bad news for domain developers? Bad news for Demand Media?
Google is to take another look at how its search engine ranks “content farms”, according to a new blog post by principal engineer Matt Cutts.
In a discussion about search quality and web spam, Cutts wrote:
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, 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.
The post does not get into any details about what hearing feedback “loud and clear” means, but it certainly suggests that Google will rethink how low-quality content sites are ranked.
This could be problematic Demand Media, which generates a lot of its revenue from “content mill” sites such as eHow, which is widely derided but ranks highly for many searches.
Demand Media is on the verge of going public.
It might also not be great news for domain investors who choose to develop their domains with low-quality content, although I suspect that kind of site would be harder to detect than a large mill.
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