[LINK] blekko search engine and "content farms"

[Robin Whittle]

Thanks Irene for pointing out the new search engine http://blekko.com,
which according to:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blekko

attempts to avoid pages created by "content farms".

I hadn't heard this term before, but it conjured up for me a
recognition of yet another process by which the world turns to "used
dogfood" (as economic crisis blogmeister Karl Denninger of
http://market-ticker.org so delicately puts it).

Sure enough:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_farm

a multimillion dollar industry employing reasonably intelligent people
to write drivel which then distracts the eyeballs, and wastes the time
and resources, of as many people as possible - all to get web
advertising revenue.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/07/writers-explain-what-its-like-toiling-on-the-content-farm202.html

What's worse is that some newspapers are using this stuff rather than
employing journalists to write something better:


http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/5725-usa-today-turns-to-the-content-farm-as-the-ship-sinks


I like the cat-and-mouse nature of this progression:

  2 billion people (so I hear) using the Net and Web.

  Money to be made from advertising.

  Search engines attract most of the people who might click
  an advertising link.

  So a new type of business ("content farms") emerges to craft
  "content" (doncha just hate the sucking feeling which always
  comes with the modern use of this unfortunate word) which is as
  cheap as possible to produce and just does the trick of:

    A - Getting a high ranking in search engines.

    B - Not looking so much like crap in the first few sentences
        regurgitated by Google that people won't click on the
        link to the content farm's page.

  This stuff infests the web and the most widely used search engine.
  (I don't think a plural is really needed here, but I haven't
  searched to see what Google's market share is.)

  Then, in response, one or more search engines are developed which
  aim to avoid being poisoned by the output of content farms.

  Presumably then, Google has to lift its game to avoid the worst of
  this stuff too.

  Now the economic pressure is on the content farms to write better
  stuff so whoever - or whatever - weeds their stuff out of blekko
  etc. is more and more tempted to include it.


- Robin