This is a bit (way) overblown. To me it sounds like a rant looking for a place to happen. I will freely acknowledge that people are creating content that provides little value to the searcher but rank highly in result-listings and picking up the ad money. But even if you get to a good appliance site, manufacturers are also gaming the review process so that you're unlikely to be able to tell the difference between somebody who really liked a product and some shill from corporation X.
Simply because sites appear in the listing that you don't like doesn't mean they are spammy. People are also writing good content for the same reason. If folks are searching for material and you can provide something unique and valuable (which is really only determined by the consumer), there is a role for additional content providers in any area. Heck, there was a HN article a week or two ago about a company that is making huge bucks providing random video instruction. Remember these guys? http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/
Finally there is existing content that is gaming Google's system to gain ranking where it probably doesn't deserve it as well, keying off of strategic partnerships and other things that just make them look better.
Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life. Whenever you put an algorithm at the center of your company people are going to manipulate it. Google doesn't get to have the "magic" or right algorithm that is somehow non-game-able any more than Microsoft or anybody else does. This is an evolutionary process and we've got to expect change and adaptation. Seeing a lot of spammy sites in your results just means that the system is gearing up for the next evolutionary leap. Can't wait to see what it is.
As a personal story, I have a massage chair that gave me fits when I bought it a few years ago. So I put the name and model in my blog.
To this day I get about a comment a month with somebody asking questions about the chair and somebody else responding. Was that a spam article? Would it have been a spam article if I had purposely targeted that particular chair's keywords?
I think it's just content, and I think the rest is just content, and I think people write content for all kinds of reasons. If you incentivize it, people are going to do more of it. Search-by-keyword incentivizes creating content.
Simply because sites appear in the listing that you don't like doesn't mean they are spammy. People are also writing good content for the same reason. If folks are searching for material and you can provide something unique and valuable (which is really only determined by the consumer), there is a role for additional content providers in any area. Heck, there was a HN article a week or two ago about a company that is making huge bucks providing random video instruction. Remember these guys? http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/
Finally there is existing content that is gaming Google's system to gain ranking where it probably doesn't deserve it as well, keying off of strategic partnerships and other things that just make them look better.
Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life. Whenever you put an algorithm at the center of your company people are going to manipulate it. Google doesn't get to have the "magic" or right algorithm that is somehow non-game-able any more than Microsoft or anybody else does. This is an evolutionary process and we've got to expect change and adaptation. Seeing a lot of spammy sites in your results just means that the system is gearing up for the next evolutionary leap. Can't wait to see what it is.
As a personal story, I have a massage chair that gave me fits when I bought it a few years ago. So I put the name and model in my blog.
To this day I get about a comment a month with somebody asking questions about the chair and somebody else responding. Was that a spam article? Would it have been a spam article if I had purposely targeted that particular chair's keywords?
I think it's just content, and I think the rest is just content, and I think people write content for all kinds of reasons. If you incentivize it, people are going to do more of it. Search-by-keyword incentivizes creating content.