Matt, thanks for responding. I guess I'm not exactly sure where to end this back and forth, but your latest response does open up a few questions of mine.
I've never argued that running Adsense helps a site rank higher, I know that it doesn't. But I do believe that sites like eHow, who presumably make Google millions of dollars a year, are given a free pass to pursue content spam like I posted in my previous comment without any sort of repercussions that we can see. They're leveraging their domain authority and producing very low quality articles to target obscure long tail variations of keywords to keep getting that traffic.
What concerns me is "If you can’t algorithmically identify a content farm, is it still ok to take action and remove a site"...is the issue that the algorithms aren't sophisticated enough to catch these content mills from spitting out article after article of low quality, long-tail targeted traffic, or that you guys have thrown in the towel and believe that if the algos aren't throwing flags, then the sites are fine?
I posted up an example of a content mill type situation in my last response. To most people, a manual review should throw up a warning flag if the goal was to identify people targeting keywords rather than trying to help people. The top 5 rankings for each of those pages shows that neither algorithmic nor manual measures are in place to deal with such a situation.
I have 10+ content sites targeting random niches. I know how the SEO game works. I know dozens of internet marketers who have dozens of their own sites each who know how to game the algo to rank high with low quality content sites like these. It's obvious people are taking advantage of the algorithm, but it doesn't appear to be drastically improving anytime soon.
I do appreciate the time and effort you have put into your responses. If you'd like to talk privately, I would love to. I'll try and watch the video you suggested tonight.
I wouldn't argue that just because current algos aren't throwing flags, the sites must be fine. We read TechCrunch and HN, hear the complaints, and see searches that we want to be better.
The challenge (in my mind, at least) is how to improve the algorithms more and when it's appropriate to say "This is low enough quality that it's actually spam, and thus we're willing to look at manual action." On the bright side, we've actually got a potential algorithm idea that we're exploring now.
I think identifying low quality content is important, yes. But the topic I've brought up is dealing with somewhat decent quality content (all of the guides do explain how to tie shoelaces) that are individually targeting subtle longtail keyword variations.
It's keyword variation content spam using hand written content and curated by very specific keyword data. So that seems to be a different algo trigger than a quality trigger.
I've never argued that running Adsense helps a site rank higher, I know that it doesn't. But I do believe that sites like eHow, who presumably make Google millions of dollars a year, are given a free pass to pursue content spam like I posted in my previous comment without any sort of repercussions that we can see. They're leveraging their domain authority and producing very low quality articles to target obscure long tail variations of keywords to keep getting that traffic.
What concerns me is "If you can’t algorithmically identify a content farm, is it still ok to take action and remove a site"...is the issue that the algorithms aren't sophisticated enough to catch these content mills from spitting out article after article of low quality, long-tail targeted traffic, or that you guys have thrown in the towel and believe that if the algos aren't throwing flags, then the sites are fine?
I posted up an example of a content mill type situation in my last response. To most people, a manual review should throw up a warning flag if the goal was to identify people targeting keywords rather than trying to help people. The top 5 rankings for each of those pages shows that neither algorithmic nor manual measures are in place to deal with such a situation.
I have 10+ content sites targeting random niches. I know how the SEO game works. I know dozens of internet marketers who have dozens of their own sites each who know how to game the algo to rank high with low quality content sites like these. It's obvious people are taking advantage of the algorithm, but it doesn't appear to be drastically improving anytime soon.
I do appreciate the time and effort you have put into your responses. If you'd like to talk privately, I would love to. I'll try and watch the video you suggested tonight.