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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

I don't think they're talking about duplicate content so much as stuff like Demand Media (ehow), Associated Content, Hubspot, ezinearticles, etc, etc.

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It'll be interesting to see whether Google will take on some of the bigger sites. Add BizRate to the list too (its pages have a 'Related Searches' keyword stuffing section, and 99% of the site is auto-generated), along with WiseGeek: possibly the worst and most spammy content farm I've seen, IMO.

I personally am always baffled how some of the really large, spammy sites with low quality content are rewarded with premium AdSense accounts and great rankings.

It is easy to bash sites, but what is Google to do when these sites have even been found useful by users of news.ycombinator.com :

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454569

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=615832

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795278

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592295

the link given in the first example above got 6 upvotes, and there is little info in the post other than the link.

a basic description is all that most web-users want. if you are doing some deep research, then these sites probably aren't good fits, but when you just want a quick overview (which is what most Google users want), then they can be useful.

I have a sneaking suspicion that you are a webmaster who sometimes finds that your site(s) rank below the sites that you bash.

If people find them useful then that's good to know :) I guess the possibility of Google allowing individuals to have a domain/site blacklist would be a good idea since you're right that I find some sites unhelpful whilst others find them useful.

>> I have a sneaking suspicion that you are a webmaster who sometimes finds that your site(s) rank below the sites that you bash.

Honestly isn't the case :) I'm not a fan of monitoring the SERPs for a bunch of keywords and seeing where I rank. I sometimes do it for a few choice keywords and I've never seen WiseGeek, About, eHow rank above me (or have pages written on the searched-for topics). So that's not the case.

I pointed out BizRate since their site is mainly auto-generated and they have a keyword stuffing section, neither of which seem to provide much/any value to users.

As for WiseGeek, they might have some useful content, but I've seen plently of pages with almost as many words of adverts as text, which clearly isn't desirable. And some of its (no doubt quickly written) content is either unhelpful or in some cases wrong.

What's wrong with eHow?

I guess if you find it helpful, nothing. I always skip their results because they're always really shallow. The kind of article you'd expect if you were paying someone $4 to research and write an article on a topic they know nothing about.

Exactly, and there are a huge number of $4 sites out there and a large number of companies providing that kind of outsourced content generation. If you've got $100k in funding to blow, it's really easy to get your first 10,000 pages of content and a stream of SEO traffic within a few months.

I agree with Ryan that these kinds of sites are worse than scrapers because they're just as useless but algorithmically much harder to detect.

They are content farms - plain and simple. You might consider throwing about.com in there, too.

They're made to earn the employers revenue, not help out people with the particular queries.

Well, why not throw out anything ending in .com or .net? After all, they're all made to earn revenue...

I hope the point is clear -- "to earn revenue" isn't an appropriate test. But your point is well taken. I'd prefer a search to turn up the site made by the guy in the garage who is passionate about the subject rather than the $4/hr content farm content.

I think if we're to continue complaining about spam we have to actually define what we mean by spam. And I have this strange feeling that not everyone will agree...

The about.com example shows how hard distinguishing quality algorithmically gets at the margins. You do actually find stuff on about.com now and then which is pretty decent--not great but decent. You might even say the same of ehow, albeit at a much lower rate.

So you don't want to just say "these are spam."

On Quora, the former owner of eHow recently wrote[1] that when he handed over the keys to the people who bought the site, it had an excellent quality of content. This gave it a good 'credibility' on Google. When it was taken over, it was turned into a content farm, but the atrophy of credibility is possibly to disproportional to the spam parameter variable, which leaves it in Google's results. At least according to one of his listed explanations.

I recall about.com as a decent site a while ago, but I believe it was acquired a while ago by ... Yahoo!? Go figure.

I think that might be what makes it so complicated. [1]: http://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Google-push-down-low-quality...

>>I recall about.com as a decent site a while ago, but I believe it was acquired a while ago by ... Yahoo!? Go figure.

About.com is owned by the New York Times Company, not Yahoo.

Why does everyone keep bashing on about.com? They've been around forever, have excellent content, and I even used their resources to learn a foreign language.

This is HN, so I'll give an example related to my startup. We make a wireless (802.11g) flash drive called the AirStash, which works like an ordinary USB SD card reader on a PC and uses HTML5 for the interface on wireless devices. Here's an example of spam content from eHow that talks about our product:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6861903_install-wireless-flash-drive...

"Wireless flash drives communicate with wireless devices using wireless protocols."

You don't say?

"Advanced wireless flash drives stream data to more than one device at a time."

Well, we're the only one out there, so I guess they're all advanced!

"Insert the USB portion of your wireless flash drive into an available USB port on your computer. Your computer should automatically recognize the device. If not, click the "Start" button and then click "My Computer." Double click the flash drive in the removable media section. This opens the drive and displays the files. Double click the executable file (start.exe, for example) to start the installation process."

Uh, no. No software installation is ever required, a point we make abundantly clear on our web site.

Basically, it's all wrong.

I just googled the AirStash and it looks awesome!

What OS does that thing run?

i think you mean hubpages instead of hubspot which is a company that makes internet marketing software for small businesses.

Arg! You're right, my mistake. I really like Hubspot, too :(

Thanks for clearing that up. I was beginning to wonder if we had done something tasteful. We're the polar opposite of search engine spam. We believe passionately in great, original content!

No, just my bad...it was too late to delete the comment. You guys are doing great, keep up the good work :)

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