Google News gets gamed by a crappy content farm - Media Criticism - Salon.com: Now, it may have been my choice of search term, or it may have been that the event is already more than a week old, but I was amazed to see, at the top of the Google News results, a story from Associated Content. A.C., of course, is the "content farm" recently acquired by Yahoo; it pays writers a pittance to crank out brief items that are -- as I've written -- crafted not to beguile human readers but to charm Google's algorithm.
As for Associated Content, it argues -- as does its competition, like the IPO-bound Demand Media -- that its articles are edited and its writers are paid and therefore its pages should be viewed as more professional than your average run-of-the-mill blogger-in-pajamas. I think they've got it backward. I'll take Pajama Boy or Girl any day. Whatever their limitations, they are usually writing out of some passion. They say something because it matters to them -- not because some formula told them that in order to top the index heap, they must jab hot search phrases into their prose until it becomes a bloody pulp.