One of my least favorite category of ‘internet companies’ are those like About.com and Demand Media’s eHow.com. These sites create basically useless, non-authorative content that misleads consumers, provides little value and prevents higher quality content from appear in search engine results because that better content is not marketed as well.
Needless to say, it’s a billion dollar business.
And to prove it Demand Media bested Wall Street’s most recent quarterly earnings expectations. The question is, with all the changes Google and the other engines are making to the search algorithms, will that continue to affect DM’s future prospects, or will they remain highly reactive step-in-step?
Like I said, I despise this type of content. It sucks.
The problem is not that they are taking advantage of this market. The problem is the consumer. We need to educate non-technical people that when they are doing searches, sites that purvey low quality content should be ignored. Often this means avoiding the first few search results; or at least understanding which companies produce shitty content, like About.com and eHow.com.
Educate your friends and family and let high quality content prevail.
Amen.