WebPixie - 7:56 pm on Aug 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

No, no, no. That's incorrect. That might be true for sites like eHow or Wikipedia but that is not true for About.com. About.com is authoritative, head and shoulders more authoritative than Wikipedia. On About.com you can verify the credentials of the authors. About.com content is solid. I would rather see that in SERPs instead of Google's crutch, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not authoritative.

About.com is a better source than Wiki and eHow, but at least when Wiki and eHow copy my content they sometimes link back to our site. We have seen a few examples of About rewriting our content, not linking to us and then out ranking us.

Basically it depends on the author. Some of them are experts in their niche and seem to do everything above board others not so much.

But I think the $300m will end up cheap if Google continues to show as much to About as it has recently. In a few niches I follow About dominating the results.