Is HubPages considered a content farm

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   mel22posted 12 years ago

   http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14 … ent-farms/... apparently others think so... and within the link above theres a another link about the Google (SiteBlocking) extension Released in March. I've just realized its there, after reading the article within.. Could this be what's lowering site traffic? and ...Could this be why  Sub-domains were put in place to prevent this?    -It's been over a year since I've been here and much has changed-
   
   This article within also explains that in the future any info from Site Blocking may be used to tweak the future Google algorithms
   
   Old news?Thoughts?

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      relacheposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yes.

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   QuestionMasterposted 12 years ago

   Any article site, no matter how well edited and monitored (and lets be honest, Hubpages is often neither of those) is considered a content farm.

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      jenniferrpoveyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      This bothers me a lot. It seems to me that this site blocking could be used as a form of negative google bombing - you don't like somebody so you get everybody to Site Block their web site and then Google slams it.
      
      And, I wonder, what will Google do if a large number of people start blocking blogspot.com. Let's see. Anyone can post there. Content rules are near-identical to Hubpages, except there's NO editors at all. Blogspot.com is not a content farm, but at many levels it might as well be.

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   paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

   Yes, we are a content farm.
   
   However, it is my opinion that google and the other search engines do not consider the phrase, "content farm", a dirty word anymore (if they ever did). If anything, quality content farms are a goldmine for advertisers to make money (their products and services sell well here), and I believe that the search engines are well aware of that fact.

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   Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

   There are two ways of defining content farms.
   
   1. All sites with user-generated content.
   2. Sites which research the most popular search terms on the web, and then pay people to write junk pages on those search terms in order to get traffic.
   
   Prior to the first Panda update, many people were using definition #1. Nevermind that this also applies to Wikipedia, which most people treat as authoritative. They assumed that's what Google meant, too, even though Google never said anything of the kind. They weren't very critical about using the word "content farm."
   
   Then they found out that Panda wasn't penalizing all user-generated-content sites, but came down like a load of bricks on most of the #2 sites.
   
   Obviously, there is a spectrum.  Many people on Hubpages and its ilk research popular keywords on their own time and try to write content targeting those searches. Some members do this to write on things they know. Others do it to try and chase profitable topics about which they know nothing.  The latter group tends to write a lot of junk. So no wonder some casual visitors to HP, seeing the latter, assume the former is also junk.  Ergo, HP gets slapped with the "Content Farm" label by some members of the blogosphere, who (let it be remembered) consider user-generated-content-sites a rival publishing platform without the bona fides and nobility of a self-hosted blog.
   
   But here is the real secret. Google doesn't CARE about the definition of "Content Farm" and doesn't define any particular site as a content farm. That Google update that this blogger claims is designed to attack content farms? It has nothing to do with content farms. Does it say "click this link if it's a content farm?" NO.
   
   It says, "Block all search results from domain X?" That link does not appear when you visit a "content farm" (whatever that may be). It appears when you visit any site, and then back out in under a minute. Google wants to know whether you left that site because (a) you didn't find what you were looking for or (b) thought that site was so bad that you never want to see it again.
   
   If enough people click (b), THEN Google assumes content on that site may not be so great, and it shouldn't send people there.
   
   A minority of people -- mostly those who read sites like that blog -- may see the "hubpages" domain name and think, "Ew, content farm!" based on their own self-definition. But they're never going to visit that link in the first place. So they're not going to back out and click the "block this domain" button. I don't think we need to worry about them.
   
   
   The ones we need to worry about are the people who land on our pages. Let's make sure we have an attractive doormat and a polished handshake, so when they arrive, even if they think, "Hmm, I'm not really going to read this," they leave with a favorable impression and don't click the "block this site; it made me throw up in my mouth" link.

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   mel22posted 12 years ago

   @ Relache , i like your brutal honesty
   @ ? , I kind of felt the same, that it was a content farm in theory... BUT...
   @GreekGeek, I like the 2 definition approach 
   @ everyone, A more relevant question which I am not sure got answered is this. Will a blocker need to block each and every sub-domain, or will it be a site- wide block against the main domain? In other words, could that be a driving factor in creating sub-domains so the block would not target the whole site in one click from a block

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   mel22posted 12 years ago

   @jp, That would be funny if everyone started blocking blogspot. They (google)might think twice it about it then and rethink the strategy since people could bomb the site with an article like the guy i linked to above put on the net.. he did specifically say the opinion was his and not to block if you felt otherwise, but it looks like a blatant attempt to get a glut of people site blocking particular sites he doesn't agree with( especialy by giving an easy link to go do so).

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   LindaSmith1posted 12 years ago

   This is strange. I looked on the list that was developed by a person, and Ezine articles, one of the highes in Page ranking is on it.
   
   Ezine does not pay writers a penny.
   
   The stupid thing about all of this Google panda is that is nothing but a bunch of mumbo jumbo, and not actual people looking at anything.  It is like having a computer monitor the world and somehow be coded to shut you down.
   
   Oh well, a lot of these sites get money from Google Adsense. So the more sites that lose rankings etc, the less ads will be clicked on, the less the KW will be worth and and less Google Adwords will make.  Oh well.
   
   Yeah, Blogger is full of garbage too

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      QuestionMasterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      eZine has gone down since Panda too - and it's a content farm.
      
      It doesn't pay but spammers use it for backlinks.

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