Editorial: No fruit from content farming

Your term paper is due tomorrow, and — save for a cover page — you’re hungry for pages and… Your term paper is due tomorrow, and — save for a cover page — you’re hungry for pages and sources. Librarians might tell you to scour databases, journals and even library catalogues. But if you’re like many college students, the research process often starts with a Google search.

At crucial moments like these, you demand quality from your Google search results — your grade could hinge on it.

This is how Google’s recent effort to curb the influence of Internet “content farms” makes sense for college students — when time matters, your focus shouldn’t be wasted on sites solely meant to lure you in, and not inform.

The controversy brews over Google Inc.’s crackdown on content farms — these are websites that actively produce large abscesses of low-quality content to increase their Google search rankings, and by extension, advertising revenue. After receiving complaints about “farming,” Google has launched a major change to its search algorithm, supposedly one that provides “better rankings for high-quality sites,” according to a blog post by Google spokesmen Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts.

Whenever an authority sticks the “quality” label on one product and withholds it from another, the losers are bound to cry foul. OrganicPop, a commenter on a Webmasterwold.com forum, decried the changes, writing, “I lost 35 percent of my traffic all at once.” Lenny2, another commenter, called the measure a “massacre.” Google says only 11.8 percent of results will be affected.

But if the algorithmic change accomplishes exactly what Singhal and Cutts say it will — that is, improve rankings for sites with original “research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on” — Internet users might be better off.

The catch, of course, is that this Google-style content pruning might be too high-minded to put into practice. Internet operations are by no means black-and-white. As an example, Demand Media — widely touted for content farming — claims that rankings actually increased for its eHow.com site but dropped for its other sites. Other smaller webmasters who attest to no “farming” practices say they’ve been hurt by the ranking reshuffling.

Even if the blades Google uses come with rough edges, we think attempting to trim the “low-quality” fat is laudable.

Sure, nonfiction writing and journalism graduates can have a hard time pocketing post-baccalaureate cash. But paying thousands of them — Demand Media has 13,000 freelance writers, according to the Associated Press — to compose cursory, useless articles on whatever Internet users might be searching only advances the profits of the content farmer while adversely affecting the pursuit of knowledge in general. In our view, young journalistic potential that could otherwise be realized in legitimate newsrooms is squandered by content farms.

In a much broader sense, content farms are not an acceptable answer to the forever-burning question: “Where will journalism be 10 years from now?” At least it’s not an answer our stomachs can handle.

And for the online masses who value the Internet’s ability to grease the wheels of information supply and demand — like procrastinating collegiate essay writers — you can pick up antacids at one of Oakland’s many pharmacies.