Google

Here's why it's a massively bad idea to rely on Google AdSense for revenues if you're an online publisher:

In a nutshell: Google bid on, displayed, and then failed to pay for over $40,000 of advertising space on Hatchlings. They have since stonewalled us for almost a year, locking us out of our accounts, screening our phone calls, ignoring our emails, and making it a living hell to figure out what exactly went wrong.

Google's well-known in publisher circles for pulling this kind of stunt. They cut you off at the knees with no warning, no redress.

Develop multiple revenue streams. Seriously.

Edit 4/27/2012: Added links to other sites discussing problems with Google's "we don't give a shit about you" behavior... (see below.)

It's official. Google is Microsoft evil.

Brian S. Hall, writing in a recent BusinessInsider.com editorial, enumerates Google's many transgressions. Go there and RTWT.

My main quibble: Hall describes Google as a monopoly. It's not. It's very successful. While it dominates several markets, Google enjoys no legal protections that prevent competitors trying to take market share away.

Google has a variety of "unfair advantages", and can exploit those advantages to... well... Google's advantage. So it does. It has a responsibility to its shareholders to exploit those advantages, maximize profits and expand into new markets, in every legally permissible way. Hall describes some ethically questionable business practices, but nothing overtly illegal.

Regarding Google's propaganda, I've held the cynical view that:

• Their motto could be paraphrased as: Don't be evil -- until you're too powerful for anyone to do anything about it. Google's there now.
• Google will do 'evil' because it's big, successful, powerful, and a business. In today's popular culture, big, successful businesses are inherently evil. Evil is in the eye of the beholder.

Postscript

Well, another way to look at this: Google's really the Fat Elvis. Continue reading or add a comment»

Will recent updates to Google's algorithms kill off content farms? I hope so. And: Is the Huffington Post a new kind of content farm? Read on...

I recently posted about Google's plans to neuter content farms like Demand Media and Associated Content.

It sounds like Google's recent Panda update may be instrumental in making these craptastic search engine-filling monstrosities less of an annoyance. Only time will tell, but I'm hopeful. Google may be evil despite best intentions, but they are quite good at tweaking their algos to respond to persistent and organized efforts to game search engine results for competitive SEO advantage.

Demand Media, Associated Content, and other content farms are nothing if not persistent and organized attempts to game the search engines for competitive advantage. Dumb way to build a business, because you're assuming the target won't respond to the attack.

You can't blame them, really. Google's AdSense ad auction system has commoditized ad space on publisher sites, driving down per-click and CPM ad revenue to low levels. Publishers are not in control of the ad rates. Rather, AdSense auctions off space to the highest bidder, which sounds great, except that a publisher can't set a floor on ad rates.

The result? Ad revenues are quite low for many online publishers, which creates a situation where smart players try to shave content creation costs to a bare minimum as a way to increase profit.

Enter content farms, which are little more than formulaic attempts to drive profits from razor-thin online ad rates. Generate tons of mediocre content, optimized to game search engine results pages. Catch as many surfers as you can, and optimize page layout to maximize ad visibility and click-through rates. Nifty, eh?

In a related story, a content farm slave farmer describes life as a content farm "writer":

I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie. My job was to write about random, out-of-context video clips, while pretending to the reader that I had watched the actual show in question. AOL knew I hadn’t watched the show. The rate at which they would send me clips and then expect articles about them made it impossible to watch all the shows — or to watch any of them, really.

~~~ SNIP ~~~

But now, I am not so mystified. With the recent release of a top-secret business document from AOL, things have been clarified. “The AOL Way,” as the document is called, lays the whole plan bare — long flowcharts, an insane number of meaningless buzzwords… the works. One slide is titled “Decide What Topics to Cover.” It then lists “Considerations” from top to bottom. “Traffic Potential” is the top consideration, followed by “Revenue/Profit” and then “Turnaround Time.” “Editorial Integrity” is at the bottom.

The Huffington Post: A new kind of content farm?

What does this tell us about the HuffPo PuffHo Huffington Post? AOL's recent acquisition is an indication the Huffington Post is little more than a profit-rich content farm of sorts, because much of the daily content is generated by unpaid contributors.

In other words, the PuffHo meshes nicely with the AOL Way. Synergy, baby! Cheap content, lotsa eyeballs. Cha-ching! Continue reading or add a comment»