
2010: The Year Information Pollution Takes Off - stakent
http://www.seobook.com/2010-year-information-pollution-takes
======
lawrence
While I agree with SEOBook that Demand Media and their ilk are the story of
the year in large scale content production and optimization, I disagree that
this necessarily ushers in a new generation of low quality content in the
SERPS.

Long tail search results have always been about "good enough" content as
opposed to superior content. Why? Because there isn't enough volume to support
superior content production at the tail.

As a searcher, I don't care if I'm looking at good enough search results /
content from a niche player, or from a big company like Demand Media.

And if Demand has found an efficient way to own a big chunk of the previously
fragmented long tail of search, hurray for them.

You could almost make the case that one company with economies of scale is
MORE likely to be able to afford to produce quality content for low volume
queries than the thousands of displaced niche publishers.

------
chubbard
This is just another example of how cheating spreads rapidly. If lots of
people are cheating then you'll eventually have to cheat to stay in the game.

Not that SEO is all cheating, but really that people are using SEO techniques
to push up their content above other content just because they gamed the
algorithm. Eventually everyone has to start gaming the system.

The question I have now is how much cheating can go on before it breaks. I'm
curious about this in general because cheating happens a lot (e.g. our recent
financial collapse brought on my non prime mortgages). Question is can we
measure cheating, can we head it off before a collapse, how much can a system
endure and remain stable?

------
butterfi
huh... What little I read was interesting, yet I was constantly distracted by
the sheer volume of huge, brightly colored ads or labeling. Talk about
information pollution.

~~~
bedris
_I was constantly distracted by the sheer volume of huge, brightly colored ads
or labeling. Talk about information pollution._

<http://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/>

~~~
GHFigs
Better yet, about:blank

------
chrischen
Shouldn't _Google_ optimize it's search to find the best content, and not the
other way around.

I just think it's ridiculous that Google's ranking system needs to be gamed if
you want your content to be found.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Google's algorithm only "needs to be gamed" if your content is unworthy or
undesirable.

~~~
chrischen
And if your content is unworthy or undesirable and you game it, then that
forces worthy and desirable content to game it too in order to compete.

------
brtzsnr
There is already way too much Information Pollution: for example, I read less
than 10% of HN and other blogs/news sites have similar proportion.

