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Search Engines Breed Worthless 'Original Content'?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the average-person-plus-anonymity-plus-audience dept.

Carl Bialik writes to tell us the Wall Street Journal has an interesting look at how search engines and original content are affecting the quality of the web. From the article: "If there is a topic in the news, people will be searching on it. If you can get those searchers to land on a seemingly authoritative page you've set up, you can make money from their arrival. Via ads, for instance. Then, to get your site ranked high in search engines, it's best to have "original content" about whatever the subject of your site happens to be. The content needs to include all the keywords that people might search for. But it can't be just an outright copy of what's on some other site; you get penalized for that by search engines."

3 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. There's a reason for that. by numbski · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's because you want to cheat the system and get ranked highly to begin with.

    If you were truly "popular", you wouldn't have to worry about worthless original content.

    Case in point...the word "Numbski" isn't a terribly popular term. If you google it, it's pretty safe that you'll find me, and my website, along with a base understand of who I am and what I do.

    The same goes for George W. Bush, or "Wall Street Journal".

    Now, if I just made up a company name right now....let's see....Framboozleweisenschnapps.

    Nope, no hits. I want that company to program open source software.

    Of course if someone goes searching for open source software no one is going to find your company. However if you get out there and do the work, when you do online articles, post your company's name, and the work you do is evident in the online content, with time, you WILL bubble to the top.

    That's the problem. An entire world full of people, people competing in similar businesses, all wanting to be in the first 10 hits of a google search.

    Quit crying. Quit trying to cheat the system and LIVE.

    "Faith without works is about as useless as a screen door on a submarine."

    Have faith in the system, do your work, do it honestly.

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

  2. Best sentence of the piece by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 3, Funny
    In fact, search engines are more like a TV camera crew let loose in the middle of a crowd of rowdy fans after a game. Seeing the camera, everyone acts boorishly and jostles to get in front. The act of observing something changes it.

    Now, everybody get on to wikipedia, and vandalize the Schroedinger's_cat article as much as you can!

  3. ScuttleMonkey - It's by Shreav · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "how search engines and original content are effecting the quality of the web."

    I'm sorry for doing this, but the word you're looking for is 'affecting', not 'effecting'.

    'Affect' is a verb, as in "search engines affect the quality of information on the web".

    'Effect' is a noun, as in cause-and-effect: "the effect that search engines have on the quality of information on the web is ...".

    Actually, I'm not sorry. They're two different words with two different meanings. What I meant is that I don't mean you any personal insult.