John Pasmore's Occassional Blog

Content: Good Farms Gone Bad by John Pasmore

Google giveth and Google crusheth.  One of our VC’s at VoyageTV sent me a note during the week about Google’s changing algorithm. I tend to not always respond to emailed articles during the day, but I tend to always respond to our VC. Google’s move was welcome and search results were shuffled immediately.

My point of view at the time was something along the lines of Hallelujah. After reading more my POV remains the same. There is no shortage of coverage on the topic and here is one that’s more General Interest at CNET if you hadn’t seen/followed the announcement. Coming from the magazine business where getting a good story assigned, edited, and fact checked – I mean a GOOD story – was always a challenge, and I’m always amazed by the amount of dreck being tossed up on the Web.

So maybe there’s hope for writers who approach the task as a craft as opposed to a search optimized, trend predicted, word counted endeavor. Good writing, like a good film, good food or anything that takes talent is still a scarce commodity. Ranking sites based on who could simply post the most sentences tipped the balance toward the Demand Media’s of the world (still does apparently – sell below). But good to see the pendulum swing. Let’s see if Google can create a ranking for a good story as opposed to good web story.

Now there have been reports of blogs and others being “hit” by the new algorithm – for me traffic is up, but here are some interesting articles on the topic:

Google Kills eHow Competitors

Google Farmer: Quest for Quality

And as much as I disagree with Demand Media’s version of content, it seems like Google’s recent adjustment was more about duplicate content than less-than-stellar content. Let’s see where the pendulum ends up.

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