The New York Times on Content Farms

The paper of record provides a good overview of the hows and whys of content farms, and what Google has launched in the last few months to combat them. If you're looking for a straightforward, layman-friendly explanation of how content farms work and why they make money, you should check it out.

Of course, you can expect the content farms, spammers and questionable SEO companies to adapt in response, but for now, the results are looking pretty good. Read it here.

In class, I often mention "content farms" as an example of the SEO-influenced clutter that makes up most of the internet's online content. It's tough to get your head around exactly how much of the content out there is created solely for gathering clicks and viewers (and thus dollars) as opposed to actually informing people. The amount of junk content is truly staggering, and it's only getting worse.

Here, then, is an interesting tell-all by a "content farm" writer from AOL. It's not pretty stuff, and once you understand how much of this junk is being created, you'll get a much better idea of just how difficult it is for search engines to find the content that matters. As I've discussed before, Google is constantly adjusting its algorithm to rank the junk lower, but it's an uphill battle.