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What it's like to write for content farms, from Brooklyn to the Philippines

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Re: What it's like to write for content farms, from Brooklyn to the Philippines

#21

Post by ninv »

romaniv wrote: post #14
sparkzilla wrote: post #6

I think it's sad that so much of this is driven by SEO -- a desire to satisfy an algorithm -- rather than to make good quality human readable content in its own right. In a desire to get on the front page of Google so much useless content is being created, and the content itself is tainted by the inclusion of keywords. This is because, as the article mentions, Google's algorithm can't tell a quality article from one…

Your comment highlights the shift in perception of search engines between around a decade ago and now. In the past "search" was something people did, while search engine was a tool that helped them. Right now "search" is something Google does. Human, on the other hand, are seen more like a passive recipients of information. My point is, Google's algorithms do not need to tell the difference between good and bad artic…

>Google's algorithms do not need to tell the difference between good and bad articles

But this is not happening. In Most of the cases, Google cannot distinguish between good and bad content and they are ranking the results using their mysterious algorithm. They are still using Backlinks to rank a content and it is wrong.

Re: What it's like to write for content farms, from Brooklyn to the Philippines

#22

Post by ninv »

sandworm101 wrote: post #2

Who reads all this content-mill fluff? I regularly write for trade journals in the legal field and cannot conceive churning out worthwhile articles in less than a day, much less hours. Is it all clickbait junk? How many of the articles here on HN come from such mills?

Companies are using this content-mill fluff is to keep their blog alive.

See this example:

main website is

http://www.livinginchico.com/

Their blog: http://blog.livinginchico.com

This is unnecessary requirement enforced by Google on all these small shops. By keeping their Blog active they will maintain their ranking in Google.

Now see this blog post http://blog.livinginchico.com/blog/have-a-stress-free-thanks...

Now you will notice one thing, there are couple of outgoing links in the content:

"other dishes" going out to http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/recipe-collections-fa...

"Check this one out here!" going out to http://www.cozi.com/live-simply/complete-plan-thanksgiving-d...

These are called backlink. This way realsimple.com and cozi.com will keep their raking up in the Google ranking.

So these days when you search in Google you click around from one content-mill fluff to another content-mill fluff. Google has been hijacked by these content-mills.

I am frustrated by this crap.

So after these so called content writers are done with this useless fluff. Someone in Demand Media will insert realsimple and cozi links into the article and post it on main website. The main purpose of this is to bring Cozi and Realsimple raking up in Google.

Search for "Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Recipes" in Google and enjoy the results. https://www.google.com/search?q=Make-Ahead+Thanksgiving+Reci...

Re: What it's like to write for content farms, from Brooklyn to the Philippines

#23

Post by bduerst »

eevilspock wrote: post #16
austenallred wrote: post #13

I haven't done it in a long time (thank heavens), but I used to write a lot of garbage as a way to afford vagabonding around China and generally avoiding real life. I would get paid $10 for 500 words of utter garbage, mostly for SEO purposes. It could be about almost anything, it just had to be well-written (no grammar errors), include a smattering of keywords in very specific locations, and had to meet a length requ…

Just like the ecosystem and the economy and any other system, it's all about feedback loops. Unfortunately the web today is dominated by a very sick feedback loop driven by perverse incentives. You were being paid to write garbage. You and whoever paid you profited by that. Clearly the incentives are wrong and the invisible hand of the free market is no where to be seen. Why? Because the free market works when consum…

This isn't unique to the internet. Reality TV, radio soaps, and other fluff content are all created to fill voids in the entertainment space and garner eyeballs. The difference is that the internet is almost infinitely scalable, and there is much more space to fill. Walled gardens, powerful search algorithms, aggregators, and other tools spring up to help consumers sort through the noise.

Re: What it's like to write for content farms, from Brooklyn to the Philippines

#26

Post by tnbonyot »

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