Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Demand Media Looks to Ease Investors’ Searching Minds” plus 3 more

Demand Media Looks to Ease Investors’ Searching Minds
Does Google Algo Update Really Target Entire Content Farms?
Next on Oprah: Smartphone Addicts and the Women Who Love Them
American Idol and UFC Make Facebook Part of the Show

Demand Media Looks to Ease Investors’ Searching Minds

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 07:34 AM PST

If you are Demand Media yesterday's Google events were probably a little disconcerting to say the least. The company is just coming out of the quiet period after raising some serious coin in a January IPO. All along they have warned about how dependent they are on results like Google search to drive traffic and that their model could suffer if there were changes in the system that worked to the detriment of Demand's product.

Now that they are a public company they need to get out in front of these matters more and they tried to do just that yesterday with this post on their blog from Executive Vice President of Media & Operations, Larry Fitzgibbon. (As of this writing the stock is down 3.36% 10:13 EST) Here is the post in its entirety.

How our content reaches the consumer – whether it's through direct visits, social media referrals, apps or search – has always been important to and monitored closely by us. We also recognize that major search engines like Google have and will continue to make frequent changes. We have built our business by focusing on creating the useful and original content that meets the specific needs of today's consumer. So naturally we applaud changes search engines make to improve the consumer experience – it's both the right thing to do and our focus as well.

Today, Google announced an algorithm change to nearly 12% of their U.S. query results. As might be expected, a content library as diverse as ours saw some content go up and some go down in Google search results. This is consistent with what Google discussed on their blog post. It's impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term – but at this point in time, we haven't seen a material net impact on our Content & Media business.

Coming out of the IPO quiet period this week, we knew the topic of Google’s search engine changes was top of mind for many people — so we discussed it on the earnings call, in a couple of follow up interviews and are now issuing this statement. However, we generally don't comment or speculate on changes by major search engines. They make changes nearly daily in a quest to give consumers the best possible experience, as do we.

Finally, in our Q4 earnings call on Tuesday we talked at length about the nature of our content and the consumer experiences we are delivering. Beyond our success helping consumers discovering our content via search, we also shared metrics around direct visits, repeat visits and social visits. We believe these metrics are leading indicators that our properties are developing into recognizable consumer brands that are delivering real value to an increasingly loyal community.

We believe these kinds of indicators are a result of our firm commitment to the interests of consumers, and that is where we continue to focus our efforts.

Well, what else are you going to say if you are Demand Media? What they might actually be thinking is "Thank our lucky stars that we got this IPO out the door before this happened!"

Demand Media may have gotten away with something by getting in the IPO door just before it was slammed shut by a Google algorithm change. How or if it impacts them in the long run remains to be seen but this is further evidence of just how fragile the who whole Internet ecosystem is because of the inherent need to depend on third parties for large parts of a company's success. It's risky business for sure.

So Demand Media is playing it cool for now but you can see how they are trying to get their train off the Google Express train and move over t the local tracks with stops at traffic from direct visits, social mentions and repeat visitors. They may be hurting yet but they are at least a little bit uncomfortable with the way things are now.

Hey, if I were them I would be too.

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Does Google Algo Update Really Target Entire Content Farms?

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 06:37 AM PST

Sometimes a farm can just have a bad year. One field doesn't produce like it has in the past so the quality of one crop suffers while the rest of the farm does fine. Google's latest update (which Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan is trying to call the "Farmer" update but I am going with the "Discontent" update) is really saying to everyone that general low quality content, no matter where it comes from, is going to get whacked.

Google's official blog says

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what's going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

The 'Personal Blocklist for Chrome" extension has played no part in this, according to Google, and the impact will only be felt in the US for now (which is where most of complaining probably was coming from anyway because that's what we do, like it or not.

Over at Search Engine Land Sullivan points out how prime content farm target number one Demand Media's CEO Richard Rosenblatt got very defensive about Demand getting the 'stupid content farm' label. If Mr. Roenblatt is so upset by this implication then my suggestion is to simply check the quality of your content before you talk anymore. The example that is given at SEL is both pathetic and comical regarding a ranked 'article’ from Demand's eHow site about how to get pregnant fast. Check it out, you'll chuckle.

The SEL post goes on to say

Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.

That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn't confirm it was targeting content farms, but (Matt) Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they're being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they'll be fine. In not, they should be worried.

This is why I think this update is trying to do really what Google has claimed it does all along but has yet to deliver on which is to simply weed out bad content from the good. Google likes to see themed sites and thus supposedly rewards those overall sites for a consistent message that is within a certain silo of information. What they have done, though, is take eHow articles and other content of questionable quality and rewarded it even though the only theme in sites like that are silos of information occurring in one spot of the overall site (like About.com). These ‘catch all ‘ content sites aren’t themed on particular area thus they have never fit the true Google site profile for quality. Despite that they get rankings or at least they did.

So will Google now be able to go into a site a find only the good quality content while ignoring the bad? What will be the percentage balance that tips the scales for Google to deem a site as junk despite a mix of good and bad content? What will the collateral damage be if they have chosen specific targets but will just let the algorithm make the deicsion? That sounds a bit against their usual way of doing things and, while I couldn't tweak an algorithm if my life depended on it, I would have to think that it would get pretty difficult to adjust full site ranking signals to ID individual pieces of quality content within a site then reward just those quality entries. Will it be a crop that gets targeted or will entire farms get shut out? With just about 12% of results being affected that still seems pretty low consider how awful some SERP’s can be when it comes to quality content returns.

In the end though maybe this is a moot point anyway. Any SEO worth their salt will tell you that while great content is necessary it really is mostly so for the reader. SEO's know that if they were given two sites, one with great content but only the ability to attract links organically, while the other site has content quality that barely meets English language quality standards but can have a boatload of links pointing to it from an SEO's efforts, the link heavy craptent will win most every time.

This might be the real problem that Google has. Maybe their heavy dependence on links as a signal of quality is simply being gamed. SEO's have found what works to rank a site despite the quality of the content and it will be interesting to see if this update truly impacts this attempt on a "Google wide" basis. Sure, the engine has come down on JC Penney and Overstock but they needed to have outside recognition of the problems then some pressure to change it. The algorithm didn't ID the Overstock overindulgence in .edu links, an Overstock competitor did. JC Penney didn't get whacked until the New York Times wrote about it.

Maybe the market is ready for an SEOleaks site where someone reveals the dirty little SEO secrets of sites that have garnered success in Google for all the wrong reasons? Maybe Google needs to hire a spy network of SEO's to do their bidding for them and get to the real root of their problem rather than depending on Uncle Algo to do it all? Can you imagine two SEO sleuths ‘interviewing a site for information and playing “Good Crop, Bad Crop”? Now that would be interesting.

I have said this on numerous occasions (and I am not unique I realize) but I think that Google's biggest threat to continued success is their dependence on technology to do everything and their minimizing of human interaction and human work to tidy up the edges. As with any piece of fabric, if the edges are frayed eventually the whole fabric will fall apart. Could that be Google's fate? Is this whole algorithm mystique more show than go? Look at business history. Every deal (business) on the planet is 90 days away from extinction, I have been told. Why should Google be any different?

Since hiring bodies would plow into profits will Google ever consider more human fire power that is not pointed toward building the perfect technology but rather dealing with the real world results of that technology? They should, in my opinion, but I suspect they won’t because despite all of the good things Google does, they are supremely arrogant. I hear that pride goeth before the fall, what about you?

So what are your thoughts on this entire issue? Has Google really slipped and is trying to regain its footing before it finds itself fully on the slippery slope with only trouble ahead? Is this much ado about nothing and just a PR move by Google? In the end, is it really possible to tell the true difference between good content and bad if there are other mitigating factors like links that can offset those signals?

Give us your take on this because you are the experts.

Next on Oprah: Smartphone Addicts and the Women Who Love Them

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 04:55 PM PST

Are you addicted to your smartphone? Be honest? Would you break out in a sweat if you lost if for more than an hour? Or even more telling, would you fish it out of a public toilet?

Crowd Science surveyed 800 smartphone users and 1 in 5 said they were addicted! The others. . . . pure denial. 26% of the smartphone junkies were iPhone users while only 13% of BlackBerry owners admitted to jonesing for a cell phone fix.

The heaviest feature users landed between the age of 30 and 49, which is older than most would imagine. It’s nice to know that 89% of those surveyed believed in a phone code of honor saying that it’s bad karma to break-up with someone via text message even though smartphones make it oh, so easy.

Then there’s the toilet question. If your phone fell in a public toilet, would you fish it out? 65% of iPhone owners said yes and 49% of BlackBerry owners said they would take the plunge. Now that’s not necessarily a sign of smartphone addiction as much as it might be a gut reaction to all that money, literally, down the drain.

Are you addicted to your smartphone? Come on, you know what they say, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.

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American Idol and UFC Make Facebook Part of the Show

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 03:16 PM PST

In another sign that Facebook is taking over the world, American Idol and mixed-martial arts masters UFC are both moving forward with applications that make the social media site a big part of their plans.

This past January, UFC offered two exclusive mixed-martial arts fights on their Facebook page and watched as 130,000 new people clicked the “like” button. After that, they were sold on the concept and began making plans to do it again and again. Says UFC president Dana White:

“What I like about the Facebook part of it is the social media portion of it. It’s people connecting with other people. My thing is, and this is my philosophy about fights, everybody wants to see a fight. The problem is letting everybody know that it’s on.”

But the UFC isn’t putting all of their eggs into one social media basket. What Facebook has done for them is given them an additional outlet for lesser fights that they couldn’t sell on cable TV or through Pay-Per-View. By sectioning the content and putting each piece exclusively in one area and not another, they’ve created that circular connectivity that is so important. The Facebook fans watch a free fight then get sent to the TV to watch the main bout. Once the fight is over, the TV sends the folks back to the website for more details and the website sends them to Facebook to catch the next exclusive fight. And all of that is being done with content they already had available.

Facebook got an even bigger vote of confidence when Fox’s American Idol decided to make it the home base for their new online voting. Prior to this season, all Idol votes had to be done by phone or text and that led to some cries of foul when last year’s expected winner came in second.

American Idol’s creator, Simon Fuller, issued the following statement:

"We have been wanting to do online voting for several years, and now Facebook has offered us a secure solution and we are ready to go. The show has always involved a high level of engagement with its viewers through texting and phone voting, and it's great to expand on this tradition."

An online voting system that is secure and hacker-proof is vital for a show like Idol, so it’s interesting that they’ve deemed Facebook connect secure enough to handle the votes. But can it handle the traffic? The first few rounds of votes shouldn’t be a problem, but when it gets to those high-rated final episodes? That will be the real test.

Now all they need to do is have American Idol’s Lee Dewyze and Crystal Bowersox fight it out one more time but inside the UFC’s famed Octagon.

Thanks to ClickZ for the UFC tip.