Am I the only that doesn’t have a problem with content farms? Based on the sheer number of sites that engage in this technique (and I’m not just referring to the high profile ones) I’m guessing the answer is no.
However, I’m fairly sure that I’m in the minority when I say that I welcome content farms, auto-content generating bots, site scraping scripts, etc with open arms. Most self-respecting SEOs will gasp and wince, wondering how I can possibly side with all of those hack spammers out there that are making life tough for legitimate SEO practitioners that do things the “right” way.
Some might even read this and automatically put me on their ish list and unfollow me, unsubscribe from my RSS feed, etc. But for those of you that are willing to stick around and hear me out with an open mind I offer up what I believe to be a valid explanation:
Artificial Intelligence.
Yep, I said it. Good old AI. You know, the stuff that’s mostly relegated to science fiction flicks and geeky forums like Slashdot. At this point, you might think that old Hugo has had one caipirinha too many. But please, bear with me.
At its core, Google’s search engine is a primitive form of AI. And by primitive, I mean that it doesn’t yet come close to mimicking human intelligence (although I agree with Danny Sullivan when he asserts that Big G could likely whip humans and give Watson a run for his money on Jeopardy).
That said, if you listen to Google’s lead scientists, the search engine will eventually evolve from being a basic tool for discovering information via keyword queries to an almost living and breathing entity that suggests information based on much deeper semantic and social inputs. In fact, their goal is for Google to suggest information that you didn’t even know you wanted to find or that would be interested in.
Now back to content farming, automatic content generation, scraping, etc.
When viewed through the lens of internet history, all of these techniques are in their infancy. And sure enough, virtually all past and current attempts to execute on these attempts have proven to be clunky, spammy, and moderately useful at best (although I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve found use in an ehow.com article from time to time). Content farming in particular seems to be following a similar pattern to real life food farming in that it started off as a fairly inefficient and disparate effort with few if any large players but has now reached a point where it is dominated by mega entities that produce at a gargantuan scale.
And the fundamental thread that ties all of these techniques together is automation. Automation of content creation. Automation of internal linking architecture. Automation of keyword research and selection. Automation of page and site-level SEO. Automation of reporting and analytics.
And make no mistake about it. There are some very bright minds in the programming world that are hard at work at building smarter and more efficient forms of automation that pump out better and better content. And by “better” I mean content that is both search-engine friendly and aesthetically pleasing and useful to humans.
One might even say that they are working on is a form of AI that will be capable of creating content that is as good or (gasp!) better than the stuff being cranked out by most humans. In fact, I’ve heard from a very honest and well-respected peer that some folks are already cranking out machine generated content that is capable of passing for human. Maybe not New Yorker material, but good enough.
But back to that in a moment.
The reason why I’m a fan of these unpopular (yet clearly effective) techniques is that:
- They help Google further refine their algorithms, which is ultimately a win/win situation for the user in me that craves better search results, and a better search experience in general
- They make SEO harder, and that puts interactive marketers who can consistently find success despite the shifting sands of search in a very favorable position
- There’s a lot that a conventional, white-hat-only SEO can learn from deconstructing the methodologies that the more successful content farms use (e.g. the ones that nobody is talking about but that continue to rake in the search engine traffic)
I’m pretty sure that I’m not the feels this way, particularly about the second bullet point above. For example, Alan Bleiweiss put together an interesting article on what he believes are the main facets of the Google’s latest “Farmer” update. In it, he goes onto mention how clients that took his advice and focused on things like original content/copy and internal linking architecture not only came out of this update unscathed, but in some cases, actually benefited from an increase in traffic.
I agree with virtually all of Alan’s assertions. But what he didn’t mention is that there are a lot alleged “content farms” that also came out unscathed and even gained traffic as a result of the latest algorithm. I know because I’ve seen it first-hand (by analyzing the traffic patterns of networks setup by colleagues of mine who shall remain nameless). How is that possible? Because the very best content “farmers” (both in the publishing and e-commerce sectors) have actually worked hard to apply the very principles that Alan outlined in his article.
In other words, there are content farms out there are challenging the very definition of the term “content farm.”
Meanwhile, Google is hard at work fashioning an engine that:
- Maximizes their revenue potential (let’s not kid ourselves)
- Rewards the right kinds of content, even if they are a little “farmy”
In the future, I expect the content farm landscape to continue mirroring real life farming trends. What I mean is that there will be a movement to farm locally (focusing on local and even hyper-local search queries) and sustainably (e.g. creating truly unique, useful, and in some cases remarkable content) as well as a return to a smaller scale of production (building out content in tight niches as opposed to catch-alls like Demand Media). In a certain sense, this is already beginning to happen. It just doesn’t make the cover of mainstream publications.
I also believe that some day in the future, machine-generated content will rival what’s created by mere mortals and it will be constructed to appeal to Google’s search machine. In the meantime, wise interactive marketers will avoid getting stuck in philosophical debates about search engine boogiemen and instead focus on ways to push the envelope and strike a balance between truly original, human content and automated, scraped, and otherwise manufactured varieties.
And you know what? As long as the content is useful to searchers, I’m fine with either or.
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The Past, Present, and Future of [Content] Farming
