#heystaks

There has been a lot of discussion about content farms of late. What are content farms? Good question; one with lots of answers depending on your perspective. The prevailing opinion is that content farms are organisations where content creation is directly linked to click-through based revenue (e.g. advertising). The concern is that these sites produce lower quality content but manage to get it ranked at the top of search engine result lists by gaming the big boys, Google and Bing.

Demand Media, one of the largest firms in the space just had a very successful IPO, so it's not surprising that there has been a flurry of articles on the rights and wrongs of this ... lets say "questionable" content model. Anyway here are some links on this and related topics that have been shared via HeyStaks over the last few days.

How content farms train their writers to write for the web.

Search startup bans content farms, but is it what users really want?

Demand Media IPO bullish, stirs the Google grizzly bear.

The Official Google Blog: Google search and search engine spam.

The age of mega content sites.

Content farming as a Top Tech Trend in 2010.

Ad-driven content. is it crossing the line?

Don't blame the content farms.

Content farms: why media, blogs, and Google should be worried.

Google's new video highlights how content farms rule at the search game.

Are Yahoo and AOL becoming content farms like Demand Media?

Howcast, a video content farm.