Comments on: Google is Demand Media’s Biggest Ally — and Its Biggest Threat

By: ian

ian — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:01:39 +0000

With the latest google panda update, google slapped demand media pretty hard. Let’s see if they can recover

By: AllThingsMe

AllThingsMe — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:49:40 +0000

eHow writer David Sarokin has defended the quality of eHow’s articles and I agreed with him that he wrote good quality articles. But he linked to topics which eHow seemed to have an endless number of articles about. Search for “how to make money online” on eHow and find more than a dozen pages of articles on that topic–David’s is the best. Even better than WriterGig’s. But most of the articles in that list of results are lousy. So my judgment on the site’s general lack of quality is based on having looked at it detail. Also, when it comes to direct ad sales, Joanne Bradford still hasn’t worked at the company as long as its last 3 rockstar heads of ad sales, so we’ll see how it goes. Lastly, you are wrong that DM doesn’t crowdsource some of its content. Are you saying people are getting paid for dares? How is a Livestrong dare not a perfect example of crowdsourced content? Certaintly it is more successful than eHow’s “I did This.” eHow never paid anyone a dime for clicking “I did This” and posting photos of what they did.

By: Koen van Turnhout

Koen van Turnhout — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:22:28 +0000

Intreresting post. I argued a couple of weeks ago that Google is causing content farming, as much as it is trying to fight it. (http://koenvanturnhout.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/collateral-damage-of-the-robots-race-on-the-web/) It is interesting to see this from the side of Demand Media, who try to find a business nice in producing the cheapest content that ranks high at Google. Curious to find out where the optimum is.

By: Mick

Mick — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:47:03 +0000

I think that when Google refers to ‘quality sites’ they increasingly mean those with content produced by salaried, professional writers. It’s hard to imagine companies that pay very little to mostly freelance/casual writers will ever be able to regularly produce content of the same quality as the Globe and Mail (www.globeandmail.ca)or New Yorker (www.NewYorker.com), for example. Demand Media would be wise, therefore, to boost traffic that originates from non-search sources.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:50:14 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Michael — I used the term “crowdsourced” to refer to content created by a large group of contributors, some of whom are paid. And I recognize that many people may see Demand’s content as valuable — the big question is whether Google does.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:59:36 +0000

Crowdsourced? Since when was Demand Media content considered crowdsourced? The ancient content from the pre-Demand days of eHow is user generated, but every piece of Demand content is produced by professional, tested writers and edited by copy editors with many years of professional experience. That’s not crowdsourcing. Go to eHow.com and Livestrong.com and Cracked.com and read any article. I doubt you’ll find one that you could objectively call “low quality” and “useless.” Too often people make judgments on conten quality without even looking at the content itself, just what they have heard someone else say about the content. I understand the relationship between Google and DM, but people fail to recognize that direct ad sales and direct site visits are growing rapidly and are becoming a much bigger portion of DM’s revenues.