signor_john - 4:01 pm on Oct 30, 2009 (gmt 0)

From a business point of view, I don't mind the profusion of keyword-driven junk sites (both "user-generated content" sites and corporate sites that pay token sums for filler content). Why? Because those junk sites make real editorial content by media professionals even more valuable by comparison.

I've got an editorial "content site," and I earn considerably more today than I did five years ago when algorithm-powered, keyword-driven sites were barely visible on the Web landscape. In my sector, at least, display advertisers are willing to pay premium rates to have their ads on real, professionally-written editorial Web sites. IMHO, the low-margin, high-volume junk sites are more of a threat to each other than to sites that offer in-depth information to highly motivated readers.

To use an analogy, high-volume publishers of low-quality content (such as Demand Media or Examiner.com) are like the thin affiliates that were all the rage a few years ago, and they probably won't have much more staying power in the search engines or the marketplace than the thin affiliates did.