Content farm

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A content farm (also called content mill ) is a business model on the Internet in which the provider of a platform has freelance workers produce content from text, videos, photos and graphics that are supposed to attract as many page views ("clicks") as possible through search engine optimization . Income is then generated through online advertising . In terms of content, most posts in content farms consist of long-term relevant content which, unlike news, can also attract readers in the long term without interventions such as costly updates. Operating instructions are often in the foreground.

Business models

There are two basic business models: Either the provider analyzes frequently asked inquiries from search engines and commissions authors to write tailor-made texts, or the authors are free to choose their topics and are trained in preparing their content for search engines . In the first case, the provider pays the authors per article; in the second, the platform operator can leave the choice of topic to the authors, because he does not pay a flat fee, but the authors only receive a share of the generated advertising income when their texts are called up. The first form is implemented by Demand Media and has also been AOL's business model since 2010 , suite101.com is an example of the second business model.

Contract work after search analysis

In the first step, topics are determined for which the creation of content would be lucrative. For example, Demand Media uses a formula that consists of three parts:

  • Frequent searches on search engines that are specific enough to define a subject. These are mostly search queries made up of several words. Google offers analysis tools and metrics for this, the simplest being Google Suggest .
  • Potential advertising revenue with a related article. For this purpose, the number of search queries and click-through rates for comparable topics and auction results for topic-relevant Google AdWords are analyzed.
  • An observation of the competition provides information as to whether the corresponding content is already available elsewhere and therefore it would be difficult to bring your own offer to the top on search results pages.

Most of the work required for this first step is done automatically at Demand Media . At the end of the first step there is a headline full of relevant keywords, which after a short revision by an editor is transferred to a database. News and only briefly current topics are separated out because the content should be as long-lasting as possible. The statistical determination of relevant topics differentiates content farms from information websites such as Answers.com , Yahoo Answers and Google Answers , which was discontinued in 2006 and which use the questions asked by individuals as topics, even if the business models begin to overlap.

In the second step, freelancers can choose a topic from the database and write an article or produce a video. This content is uploaded and briefly checked:

  • Automated control against text plagiarism
  • Editorial control. The nature and extent of this control is controversial and is cited by critics as a reason for poor quality content farm content.

The articles or videos are then distributed via the websites sent by the content farm. These are not always the sites that belong directly to the content farm, such as eHow in the case of Demand Media , but in some cases also other websites that integrate third-party content along with advertising into their site via affiliate marketing. In the third step of the article or video is as long as possible online and through search engine optimization ( Search Engine Optimization, SEO possible reach high ranks) of the content-farm operator in the search results and thus import the projected advertising revenue. The producers of the contributions, i.e. authors and videographers, are paid directly for their contributions (e.g. USD 15–20 per article and USD 30 for videos on Demand Media, as of February 2010).

Revenue sharing with free choice of topic

A platform operator who pays authors through a share of sales can leave the choice of topics to the freelancers. The decisive factor here is that authors prepare their contributions in a way that is suitable for search engines so that they can be found and accessed as often as possible. For this purpose, the employees are trained in search engine optimization techniques. Here the bond between platform operator and employee is closer because the revenue sharing ensures common interests. The aim of the providers is to attract qualified authors and to retain them permanently.

Companies

The first companies to operate content farming as their main activity come from the USA. Demand Media Inc. , founded in 2006, is the largest representative, followed by Associated Content . In addition to start-ups that were founded for this purpose, there are more and more established media and Internet companies who, with the failure of traditional business models, are switching from journalism on the Internet to the content farm principle. One example is the seed.com service that AOL launched in 2010.

Demand media

Demand Media was founded in 2006 by Richard Rosenblatt and Shawn Colo, both of whom had extensive experience with start-ups, financing and internet business models. Rosenblatt was, among other things, Chairman of Myspace.com . Demand Media raised $ 355 million and publishes its content on sites such as eHow and LiveStrong. In 2009 the company had sales of around USD 200 million. In January 2011, when the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol DMD), the company had an enterprise value of over USD 1 billion.

Associated Content

Associated Content was founded by Luke Beatty in 2005 and is based in Denver . By 2010, 380,000 employee accounts had written for the company and the website had 16 million visitors a month. Associated Content was acquired by Yahoo in 2010 for approximately $ 100 million .

Content farms in Germany

The German-language content farm Suite101.de went online in February 2008. According to the company's Berlin branch, in August 2010 there were more than 35,000 German-language articles on topics such as home, hobbies and health, written by 750 authors. Behind the website is the Canadian company Suite101.com Media Inc. from Vancouver , which was restarted in 2006 with the participation of Hubert Burda Medias Burda Digital Ventures from a company that had existed since 1996.

criticism

Critics claim that many of the articles produced in content farms are of only superficial benefit to the reader and that they are poorly researched or poorly written. The problem of copyright infringement is also not resolved. Other critics point to the poor pay of freelance workers, which completely undermines the model of freelance journalists or authors who can make a living from their work. Another point of criticism is the displacement of better search results by the sheer mass of content farm posts and the sophisticated SEO techniques of their operators.

Michael Arrington , founder and editor-in-chief of TechCrunch , described content farms like Demand Media as McDonald’s of online media: produced as cheaply and as quickly as possible and available in abundance. The business model creates a " race to the bottom " in which every writer and producer of online media who spends time and effort on their content is pushed out of business.

In 2009, Jeff Jarvis , a professor of journalism at the City University of New York , thought fears that content farms would flood the Internet - or search engines - with cheap content were exaggerated: "Crap that's just good enough to duper search algorithms." Internet has always been “filled with crap”. The question of how to find good content in it is not new and the answer has made Google a billion-dollar company. Better search algorithms are the answer to bad content.

Search engine reactions

The search engine operators react to the growth of the content farms by adapting their search algorithms. Google is constantly making minor adjustments to its criteria and, with the Google Panda update in February 2011, massively intervened in English-language search results in order to push back content farms. For content farm operators, this change resulted in a loss of views that reached 25-30%. In August 2011, Google activated such a change in Germany and other countries in order to make higher-quality articles more visible than content farms and shopping or product directories. The greatest loss of visibility had the party in absolute terms gutefrage.net , ciao.de and dooyoo.de , percentage lost kelkoo.de , alatest.de , wikio.de , online-artikel.de , webnews.de and suite101.de the most. In Germany, around 90% of all searches on the Internet in 2010 were made via Google.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f David Carr: Plentiful Content, So Cheap . In: New York Times, February 7, 2010.
  2. ^ A b Craig Silverman: How Content Farms Train Their Writers to Write for the Web . In: MediaShift , Public Broadcasting Service, July 22, 2010.
  3. ↑ Nicholas Carlson: LEAKED: AOL's Master Plan . businessinsider.com, February 1, 2011
  4. ^ A b Richard MacManus: Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried ( Memento from October 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). In. ReadWriteWeb of December 13, 2009.
  5. ↑ ReadWriteWeb.com: Content Farms 101: Why Suite101 Publishes 500 Articles a Day ( Memento of August 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) , July 20, 2010
  6. ↑ a b AP: Yahoo to Buy a Freelance Site, Associated Content . In: New York Times, May 18, 2010.
  7. ↑ Julianne Pepitone: Demand Media shares soar 33% in IPO . In: CNN Money, January 26, 2011.
  8. ^ Yahoo Buys Associated Content for a reported $ 100 million . In: Business Insider, May 19, 2010.
  9. ↑ Helmut van Rinsum: Call a Content - You search, we write . In: advertise & sell from August 12, 2010.
  10. ↑ Michael Arrington : The End Of Hand Crafted Content . In: TechCrunch of December 13, 2009.
  11. ↑ Jeff Jarvis: Content farms v. curating farmers . In: BuzzMachine of December 14, 2009.
  12. ↑ Spiegel online: Google kicks out annoying zero content , June 14, 2011
  13. ↑ Advertise & Sell: Suite101 and the power of Google: "A wake-up call for the whole industry" , April 7, 2011
  14. ↑ Andreas Albert: Search engine optimization: Google takes action against content farms with "Panda" ( Memento from September 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Financial Times Deutschland of August 15, 2011.
  15. ↑ Panda update: Google's quality offensive reaches Germany . spiegel.de August 15, 2011.
  16. ↑ Competitor files another antitrust complaint against Google . In: Spiegel Online from February 22, 2011.