farmboy - 3:29 pm on Oct 3, 2007 (gmt 0)

Google also owns a search engine, and it can't be thrilled by having to identify and filter the millions of worthless "word farm" pages in its search index.

Who gets to decide which pages are worthless?

I know someone who has, and continues to build, a number of very large sites by paying people to write 300-500 word articles on subjects he assigns. Each article goes on a page by itself with AdSense ads and links to his own products.

The article authors don't conduct enough research to provide an in-depth explanation of the subject, just enough to provide some basic information.

I don't particularly like it when I'm researching a topic and end up on a page of this type.

But let's face it, an article written by someone with limited firsthand knowledge of the subject describes a lot of newspaper articles - not to mention local television news reports. And although I often think of news reports as "worthless", they do perform a function.

If my choices are having to wade through clutter to find the information I want on the web vs. having someone else decide which articles are worthless and can be included on the web for me to find, I'll certainly choose the former.

Two final points:

1. My experience has been that the AdSense rewards are greater when AdSense is displayed on a page with basic but not in-depth information. It tends to generate an interest and thus clicks on relevant ads displayed on the page. This has been discussed here previously. That doesn't mean I like it or agree with it, but I have found it to be reality and I understand why it happens.

2. If you search for red widgets and find you have to wade through a lot of fluff to find the real information you want, that presents an opportunity to organize the good information and present it to other people who seek information on red widgets.

FarmBoy