Does Google Search Change Spell Death for Demand Media?

It's a little early for producers of thoughtful content to crow about how eHow traffic fell 50 percent after Google changed its search algorithm last week. eHow producer Demand Media, of course, said that the effect of the algorithm change was "significantly" less than the 50 percent reported. The fact Demand Media didn't say how much less does mean that it must have hurt. As did an almost $7 drop in their share price during trading on Monday.

But that's not enough to break Demand Media's business model. Demand Media pays pennies per word or video byte compared to other content producers such as news organizations or magazine publishers, and it's lamentable that content created in response to searches gets traffic that should go to content created with greater standards in order to provide more value to readers. Changes in how search engines display results is certainly Demand Media's Achilles heel. But playing search engines is Demand Media's game so adapting to such changes is also part of their business plan. I wouldn't hold your breath unless Google gets aggressive about changing code frequenlty to avoid its engine being played.

Revisiting 'content farms'

The Nieman Journalism Lab's Week in Review quoted something I wrote here last week on how newspapers can beat content farms at their own game by learning how to use algorithms as Demand Media does to find out what people want to read about.

I'd agreed with what Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Fry had told The Wrap, saying that the main problem with the Demand Media business model is that "people seeking information will have their time wasted reading crummy content produced for spiders, not readers.”

The problem with "demand" content is that it's poor quality content and doesn't build loyalty to the sites that use it. So I suggested newspapers can beat the content farms at their own game by using the business model to produce quality content created for readers.

The Neiman Journalism Lab's roundup countered my musing with an argument from Harvard prof Ethan Zuckerman, who said dictating content based on search would be a bad way to run a newspaper: “You’d give up the critical ability to push topics and parts of the world that readers might not be interested in, but need to know about to be an engaged, informed citizen.”

He's right. We still need to tell people about things they don't yet know they need to know. Breaking news, investigative journalism, consumer reports, scientific breakthroughs, analysis of the impact environmental degradation and industrial agricultural practices are having on our lives ... all these fall outside what an algorithm will likely discover from web searches.

But clearly, if we aren't also providing them with timely access to information about the things they are searching for, we won't have an engaged audience that considers us a destination - which is precisely how we CAN beat content farms at their own game. Poorly written content won't inspire people to return or spend very much time reading it.

But if news organizations aren't drawing people in with solid, well-written information about the things they are searching for - and doing it better than the content farms - then:

1) we won't be able to get the other "important" information in front of them in a timely manner, because even if we publish it they won't be on our sites to see it, and
2) they will turn to us only during moments of crisis for "important" information and we can't build a business model on that.

News organizations shouldn't abandon our mandate to beat the content farms at their own game. But we can adapt -- learn to use technology to keep a finger on the pulse of what people want to know about -- in order to become a destination that can still tell them about what they need to know about, and fulfill our mandate.