SEO News

Now is the best and exciting time to be in marketing. The new data-driven approaches and infrastructure to collect customer data are truly changing the marketing game, and there is incredible opportunity for those who act upon the new insights the data provides” – Mark Jeffrey, Kellog School Of Management

I think Jeffries is right – now is one of the best and exciting times to be in marketing!

It is now cheap and easy to measure marketing performance, so we are better able to spot and seize marketing opportunities. If we collect and analyze the right data, we will make better decisions, and increase the likelihood of success.

As Google makes their system harder to game using brute force tactics, the next generation of search marketing will be tightly integrated with traditional marketing metrics such as customer retention, churn, profitability, and customer lifetime value. If each visitor is going to be more expensive to acquire, then we need to make sure those visitors are worthwhile, and the more we engage visitors post-click, the more relevant our sites will appear to Google.

We’ll look at some important metrics to track and act upon.

But first….

Data-Driven Playing Field

There is another good reason why data-driven thinking should be something every search marketer should know about, even if some search marketers choose to take a different approach.

Google is a data-driven company.

If you want to figure out what Google is going to do next, then you need to think like a Googler.
Googlers think about – and act upon – data.

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Douglas Bowman, a designer at Google, left the company because he felt they placed too much reliance on data over intuition when it came to visual design decisions.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle

Regardless of whether you think acting on data or intuition is the right idea, if you can relate to the data-driven mindset and the company culture that results, you will better understand Google. Searcher satisfaction metrics are writ-large on Google’s radar and they will only get more refined and granular as time goes on.

Update Panda was all about user engagement issues. If a site does not engage users, it is less likely to rank well.

As Jim Boykin notes, Google are interested in the “long click”:

On the most basic level, Google could see how satisfied users were. To paraphrase Tolstoy, happy users were all the same. The best sign of their happiness was the “long click”. this occurred when someone went to a search result, ideally the top one, and did not return. That meant Google has successfully fulfilled the query. But unhappy users were unhappy in their own ways, most telling were the “short clicks” where a user followed a link and immediately returned to try again. “If people type something and then go and change their query, you could tell they aren’t happy,” says (Amit) Patel. “If they go to the next page of results, it’s a sign they’re not happy. You can use those signs that someone’s not happy with what we gave them to go back and study those cases and find places to improve search.

In terms of brand, the more well known you are, the more some of your traffic is going to be pre-qualified. Brand awareness can lower your bounce rate, which leads to better engagement signals.

Any site is going to have some arbitrary brand-related traffic and some generic search traffic. Where a site has good brand-related searches, those searches create positive engagement metrics which lift the whole of the site. The following chart is conceptual, but it drives the point home. As more branded traffic gets folded into the mix, aggregate engagement metrics improve.

If your site and business metrics look good in terms of visitor satisfaction – i.e. people are buying what you offer and/or reading what you have to say, and recommending you to their friends – it’s highly likely your relevancy signals will look positive to Google, too. People aren’t just arriving and clicking back. They are engaging, spending time, talking about you, and returning.

Repeat visits to your site, especially from logged-in Google users with credit cards on file, are yet another signal Google can look at to see that people like, demand and value what you offer.

Post-Panda, SEO is about the behavior of visitors post-click. In order to optimize for visitor satisfaction, we need to measure their behavior post-click and adjust our offering. A model that I’ve found works well in a post-Panda environment is a data-driven approach, often used in PPC. Yes, we still have to do link building and publish relevant pages, but we also have to focus on the behavior of users once they arrive. We collect and analyze behavior data and feed it back into our publication strategy to ensure we’re giving visitors exactly what they want.

What Is Data Driven Marketing?

Data driven marketing is, as the name suggests, the collection and analysis of data to provide insights into marketing strategies.

It’s a way to measure how relevant we are to the visitor, as the more relevant we are, the more positive our engagement metrics will be. A site can constantly be adapted, based on the behavior of previous visitors, in order to be made more even more relevant.

Everyone wins.

The process involves three phases. Setting up a framework to measure and analyze visitor behaviour, testing assumptions using visitor data, then optimizing content, channels and offers to maximize return. This process is used a lot in PPC.

Pre-web, this type of data used to be expensive to collect and analyse. Large companies engaged market researchers to run surveys, focus groups, and go out on the street to gather data.

These days, collecting input from consumers and adapting campaigns is as easy as firing up analytics and creating a process to observe behaviour and modify our approach based on the results. High-value data analysis and marketing can be done on small budgets.

Yet many companies still don’t do it.

And many of those that do aren’t measuring the right data. By capturing and analysing the right data, we put ourselves at a considerable advantage to most of our competitors.

In his book Data Driven Marketing, Jeffrey notes that the lower performing companies in the Fortune 500 were spending 4% less than the average on marketing, and the high performers were investing 20% more than average. Low performers focused on demand generation – sales, coupons, events – whereas high performers spend a lot more on brand and marketing infrastructure. Infrastructure includes the processes and software tools needed to capture and analyse marketing data.

So the more successful companies are spending more on tools and process than lower performing companies.

When it comes to the small/medium sized businesses, we have most of the tools we need readily available. Capturing and analyzing the right data is really about process and asking the right questions.

What Are The Right Questions?

We need a set of metrics that help us measure and optimize for visitor satisfaction.

Jeffrey identifies 15 data-analysis areas for marketers. Some of these metrics relate directly to search marketing, and some do not. However, it’s good to at least be aware of them as these are the metrics traditional marketing managers use, so might serve as inspiration get us thinking about where the cross-overs into search marketing lay. I recommend reading his book to anyone who wants a crash course in data-driven marketing and to better understand where how marketing managers think.

• Brand awareness
• Test Drive
• Churn
• Customer satisfaction
• Take rate
• Profit
• Net Present Value
• Internal Rate Of Return
• Payback
• Customer Lifetime Value
• Cost Per Click
• Transaction Conversion Rate
• Return On Ad Dollars Spent
• Bounce Rate
• Word Of Mouth (Social Media Reach)

I’ll re-define this list and focus on a few metrics we could realistically use that help us optimize sites and offers in terms of visitor engagement and satisfaction. As a bonus, we’ll likely create the right relevancy signature Google is looking for which will help us rank well. Most of these metrics come directly from PPC.

First, we need a…..dashboard! Obviously, a dashboard is a place where you can see how you’re progressing, at a glance, measured over time. There are plenty of third party offerings, or you can roll-your-own, but the important thing is to have one and use it. You need a means to measure where you are, and where you’re going in terms of visitor engagement.

1. Traffic Vs Leads

Traffic is a good metric for display and brand purposes. If a site is making money based on how many people see the site, then they will be tracking traffic.

For everyone else, combining the two can provide valuable insights. If traffic has increased, but the site is generating the same number of leads – or whatever your desired engagement action may be, but I’ll use the term “leads” to mean any desired action – then is that traffic worthwhile? Track how many leads are closed and this will tell you if the traffic is valuable. If the traffic is high, but engagement is low, then visitors are likely clicking back, and this is not a signal Google deems favorable.

This data is also the basis for adjusting and testing the offer and copy. Does engagement increase or decrease after you’ve adjusted the copy and/or the offer?

2. Search Channel Vs Other Channels

Does search traffic result in more leads than, say, social media traffic? Does it result in more leads vs any other channel? If so, then there is justification to increase spending on search marketing vs other channels.

Separate marketing channels out so you can compare and contrast.

3. Channel Growth

Is the SEM channel growing, staying the same, or declining vs other channels?

Set targets and incremental milestones. Create a process to adjust copy and offers and measure the results. The more conversions to desired action, the better your relevancy signal is likely to be, and the more you’ll be rewarded.

You can get quite granular with this metric. If certain pages are generating more leads than others as the direct result of keyword clicks, then you know which keyword areas to grow and exploit in order to grow the performance of the channel as a whole. It can be difficult to isolate if visitors skip from page to page, but it can give you a good idea which entry pages and keywords kick it all off.

4. Paid Vs Organic

If a search campaign is running both PPC and SEO, then split these two sources out. Perhaps SEO produces more leads. In which case, this will justify creating more blog posts, articles, link strategies, and so on.

If PPC produces more leads, then the money may be better spent on PPC traffic, optimizing offers and landing pages, and running A/B tests. Of course, the information gleaned here can be fed into your organic strategies. If the content works well in PPC, it is likely to work well in SEO, at least in terms of engagement.

5. Call To Action

How do you know if a call to action is working? Could the call to action be worded differently? Which version of the call to action works best? Which position does it work best? Does the color of the link make a difference?

This type of testing is common in PPC, but less so in SEO. If SEO pages are optimized in this manner, then we increase the level of engagement and reduce the click-back.

6. Returning Visitor

If all your visitors are new and never return, then your broader relevance signals aren’t likely to be great.

This doesn’t mean all sites must have a high number of return visitors in order to deemed relevant – one-off sales sites would be unlikely to have return visitors, yet a blog would – however, if your site is in a class of sites where every other site listed is receiving return visits, then your site is likely to suffer by comparison.

Measure the number of return visitors vs new visitors. Think about ways you can keep visitors coming back, especially if you suspect that your competitors have high return visitor rates.

7. Cost Per Click/Transaction Conversion Rate/Return On Ad Dollars Spent

PPC marketers are familiar with these metrics. We pay per click (CPC) and hope the visitor converts to desired action. We get a better idea of the effectiveness of keyword marketing when we combine this metric with transaction conversion rate (TCR) and return on ad dollars spent (ROA). TCR = transaction conversion rate; the percentage of customers who purchase after clicking through to your website. ROA = return on ad dollars spent.

These are good metrics for SEOs to get their heads around, too, especially when justifying SEO spends relative to other channels. For cost per click, use the going rate on Adwords and assign it to the organic keyword if you want to demonstrate value. If you’re getting visitors in at a lot lower price per click the SEO channel looks great. The cost-per-click in SEO is also the total cost of the SEO campaign divided by clicks over time.

8. Bounce Rate

Widely speculated to be an important metric post-Panda. Obviously, we want to get this rate down, Panda or not.

If you’re seeing good rankings but high bounce rates for pages it’s because the page content isn’t relevant enough. It might be relevant in terms of content as far as the algorithm sees it, but not relevant in terms of visitor intent. Such a page may drift down the rankings over time as a result, and it certainly doesn’t do other areas of your business any good

9. Word Of Mouth (Social Media Reach/Brand)

Are other people talking about you? Do they repeat your brand name? Do they do so often? If you can convince enough people to search for you based on your name, then you’ll “own” that word. Google must return your site, else they’ll be seen as lacking.

Measuring word-of-mouth used to be difficult but it’s become a lot easier, thanks to social media and the various information mining tools available. Aaron has written a lot on the impact of brand in SEO, so if this area is new to you, I’d recommend reading back through The Rise Of Brand Over Time, Big Brands and Potential Brand Signals For Panda.

10. Profit

It’s all about the bottom line.

If search marketers can demonstrate they add value to the bottom line, then they are much more likely to be retained and have budget increased. This isn’t directly related to Panda optimization, other than in the broad sense that the more profitable the business, the more likely they are keeping visitors satisfied.

Profit = revenue – cost. Does the search marketing campaign bring in more revenue that it costs to run? How will you measure and demonstrate this? Is the search marketing campaign focused on the most profitable products, or the least? Do you know which products and services are the most profitable to the business? What value does your client place on a visitor?

There is no one way of tracking this. It’s a case of being aware of the metric, then devising techniques to track it and add it to the dashboard.

11. Customer Lifetime Value

Some customers are more important than others. Some customers convert, buy the least profitable service or product, and we never hear from them again. Some buy the most profitable service or product, and return again and again.

Is the search campaign delivering more of the former, or the latter? Calculating this value can be difficult, and relies on internal systems within the company that the search marketer may not have access to, but if the company already has this information, then it can help validate the cost of search marketing campaigns and to focus campaigns on the keyword areas which offer the most return.

Some of these metrics don’t specifically relate to ranking, they’re about marketing value, but perhaps an illustration of how some of the traditional marketing metrics and those of search marketers are starting to overlap. The metrics I’ve outlined are just some of the many metrics we could use and I’d be interested to hear what other metrics you’re using, and how you’re using them.

Optimizing For Visitor Experience

If you test these metrics, then analyse and optimize your content and offers based on your findings, not only will this help the bottom line, but your signature on Google, in terms of visitor relevance, is likely to look positive because of what the visitor does post-click.

When we get this right, people are engaging. They are clicking on the link, they’re staying rather than clicking back, they’re clicking on a link on the page, they’re reading other pages, they’re interacting with our forms, they’re book-marking pages or telling others about our sites on social media. These are all engagement signals, and increased engagement tends to indicate greater relevance.

This is diving deeper than a traditional SEO-led marketing approach, which until quite recently worked, even if you only operated in the search channel and put SEO at the top of the funnel. It’s not just about the new user and the first visit, it’s also about the returning visitor and their level of engagement over time. The search visitor has a value way beyond that first click and browse.

Data-driven content and offer optimization is where SEO is going.

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.” – Eric Schmidt

Authoritarian Regimes & Data Mining

One wonders how Mr. Schmidt can balance the above statement along with warning about authoritarian governments.

And the risks from such data mining operations are not just in “those countries over there.” The ad networks that hire lobbyists to change foreign privacy laws do so such that they can better track people the globe over and deliver higher paying ads. (No problem so long as they don’t catch you on a day you are down and push ads for a mind numbing psychotropic drug with suicidal or homicidal side effects.)

And defense contractors are fast following with mining these social networks. (No problem so long as your name doesn’t match someone else’s that is on some terrorist list or such.)

Large & Anonymous

What’s crazy is when we get to the other end of the spectrum. Want to know if your hamburger has pink slime in it? Best of luck with that.

Then you get the mainstream media sites that get a free pass (size = trust) and it doesn’t matter if their content is created through…

• a syndicated partnership of with eHow-styled content (Demand Media)
• a syndicated partnership of scraped/compiled date (FindTheBest)
• auto-generated content from a bot (Narrative Science)
• scrape + outsourcing + plagiarism + fake bylines (Journatic)
• top 10 ways to regurgitate top 10 lists from 10 different angles (BuzzFeed)
• hatchet job that was written before manufacturing the “conforming” experience (example)
• factually incorrect hate bait irrelevant article with no author name, wrapped in ads for get rich quick scams (example)

… no matter how it is created, it is fine, so long as you have political influence. Not only will it rank, but it will be given a ranking boost based on being part of a large site, even if it is carpet bombed with irrelevant ads.

Coin Operated Ideals

But then the companies that claim this transparency is vital for society pull a George Costanza & “Do The Opposite” with their own approach.

Whenever they manipulate markets to their own benefit they claim the need for secrecy to stop spammers or protect privacy. But then they collect the same data & pass it along without consent to those who pay for the data.

When Google was caught vandalizing OpenStreetMaps or lying to businesses listed in Mocality, those were the acts of anonymous contractors. When Google got caught in a sting operation pushing ads for illegal steroids from Mexico they would claim that behavior didn’t reflect their current policies and that we need to move on.

Then of course there are the half dozen (or more) times that Google has violated their own search quality guidelines. So often that is due yet again to “outsourcing” or a partner of some sort. And they do that in spite of the ability to arbitrarily hardcode themselves in the result set.

If we don’t exam the faux ideals push to shift cultural norms we will end up with a crappier world to live in. Some Googlers (or Google fanbois) who read this will claim I am a broken record stuck in the past on this stuff. But those same people will be surprised x years down the road when something bizarre surfaces from an old deranged contact or prior life.

Anyone who has done anything meaningful has also done some things that are idiotic.

Is that sort of stuff always forever relevant or does it make sense at some point to move on?

When that person is Eric Schmidt, the people he pontificate to are blackballed for following his ideals.

After all, his ideals don’t actually apply to him.

In our infographic about the sausage factory that is online journalism, we had a throw away line about how companies were partnering with FindTheBest to auto-generate subdomains full of recycled content. Apparently, a person named Brandon who claims to work for FindTheBest didn’t think our information was accurate:

Hi Aaron,
My name is Brandon. I have been with FindTheBest since 2010 (right after our launch), and I am really bummed you posted this Infographic without reaching out to our team. We don’t scrape data. We have a 40 person+ product team that works very closely with manufacturers, companies, and professionals to create useful information in a free and fair playing field. We some times use whole government databases, but it takes hundreds-of-thousands of hours to produce this content. We have a product manager that owns up to all the content in their vertical and takes the creation and maintenance very seriously. If you have any questions for them about how a piece of content was created, you should go to our team page and shoot them a email. Users can edit almost any listing, and we spend a ton of time approving or rejecting those edits. We do work with large publishers (something I am really proud of), but we certainly do not publish the same exact content. We allow the publishers to customize and edit the data presentation (look, style, feel) but since the majority of the content we produce is the factual data, it probably does look a little similar. Should we change the data? Should we not share our awesome content with as many users as possible? Not sure I can trust the rest of your “facts”, but great graphics!

I thought it was only fair that we aired his view on the main blog.

…but then that got me into doing a bit of research about FindTheBest…

In the past when searching for an issue related to our TV I saw a SERP that looked like this

Those mashed sites were subdomains on trusted sites like VentureBeat & TechCrunch.

Graphically the comparison pages appear appealing, but how strong is the editorial?

How does Find The Best describe their offering?

In a VentureBeat post (a FindTheBest content syndication partner) FTB’s CEO Kevin O’Connor was quoted as saying: “‘Human’ is dirty — it’s not scalable.”

Hmm. Is that a counter view to the above claimed 40 person editorial research team? Let’s dig in.

Looking at the top listed categories on the homepage of Find The best I counted 497 different verticals. So at 40 people on the editorial team that would mean that each person managed a dozen different verticals (if one doesn’t count all the outreach and partnership buildings as part of editorial & one ignores the parallel sites for death records, grave locations, find the coupons, find the company & find the listing).

Google shows that they have indexed 35,000,000 pages from FindTheBest.com, so this would mean each employee has “curated” about 800,000 pages (which is at least 200,000 pages a year over the past 4 years). Assuming they work 200 days a year that means they ensure curation of at least 1,000 “high quality” pages per day (and this is just the stuff in Google’s index on the main site…not including the stuff that is yet to be indexed, stuff indexed on 3rd party websites, or stuff indexed on FindTheCompanies.com, FindTheCoupons.com, FindTheListing, FindTheBest.es, FindTheBest.or.kr, or the death records or grave location sites).

Maybe I am still wrong to consider it a bulk scrape job. After all, it is not unreasonable to expect that a single person can edit 5,000 pages of high quality content daily.

Errr….then again…how many pages can you edit in a day?

Where they lost me though was with the “facts” angle. Speaking of not trusting the rest of “facts” … how crappy is the business information for SEO Book on FindTheBest that mentions that our site launched in 2011, we have $58,000 in sales, and we are a book wholesaler.

I realize I am afforded the opportunity to work for free to fix the errors of the scrape job, but if a page is full of automated incorrect trash then maybe it shouldn’t exist in the first place.

I am not saying that all pages on these sites are trash (some may be genuinely helpful), but I know if I automated content to the extent FTB does & then mass email other sites for syndication partnerships on the duplicate content (often full of incorrect information) that Google would have burned it to the ground already. They likely benefit from their CEO having sold DoubleClick to Google in the past & are exempt from the guidelines & editorial discrimination that the independent webmaster must deal with.

One of the ways you can tell if a company really cares about their product is by seeing if they dogfood it themselves.

Out of curiousity, I looked up FindTheBest on their FindTheCompany site.

They double-list themselves and neither profile is filled out.

That is like having 2 sentence of text on your “about us” page surrounded by 3 AdSense blocks. :D

I think they should worry about fixing the grotesque errors before worrying about “sharing with as many people as possible” but maybe I am just old fashioned.

Certainly they took a different approach … one that I am sure that would get me burned if I tried it. An example sampling of some partner sites…

• accountants.entrepreneur.com
• acronyms.sciencedaily.com
• alternative-fuel.cleantechnica.com
• analytics-software.businessknowhow.com
• antivirus.betanews.com
• apps.edudemic.com
• atvs.agriculture.com
• autopedia.com/TireSchool/
• autos.nydailynews.com
• backup-software.venturebeat.com
• bags.golfdigest.com
• beer.womenshealthmag.com
• best-run-states.247wallst.com
• bestcolleges.collegenews.com
• bikes.cxmagazine.com
• bikes.triathlete.com
• birds.findthelisting.com
• birth-control.shape.com
• brands.goodguide.com
• breast-pumps.parenting.com
• broker-dealers.minyanville.com
• businessschools.college-scholarships.com
• camcorders.techcrunch.com
• cars.pricequotes.com
• cats.petharbor.com
• catskiing.tetongravity.com
• chemical-elements.sciencedaily.com
• comets-astroids.sciencedaily.com
• companies.findthecompany.com
• companies.goodguide.com
• compare-video-editing-software.burnworld.com
• compare.consumerbell.com
• compare.guns.com
• compare.roadcyclinguk.com
• comparemotorbikes.motorbike-search-engine.co.uk
• congressional-lookup.nationaljournal.com
• courses.golfdigest.com
• crm.venturebeat.com
• cyclocross-bikes.cyclingdirt.org
• dealers.gundigest.com
• death-record.com
• debt.humanevents.com
• design-software.underworldmagazines.com
• destination-finder.fishtrack.com
• diet-programs.shape.com
• digital-cameras.techcrunch.com
• dinosaurs.sciencedaily.com
• dirt-bikes.cycleworld.com
• dogbreeds.petmd.com
• dogs.petharbor.com
• donors.csmonitor.com
• e-readers.techcrunch.com
• earmarks.humanevents.com
• earthquakes.sciencedaily.com
• ehr-software.technewsworld.com
• fallacies.sciencedaily.com
• fec-candidates.theblaze.com
• fec-committees.theblaze.com
• federal-debt.nationaljournal.com
• fha-condos.realtor.org
• fha.nuwireinvestor.com
• financial-advisors.minyanville.com
• findthebest.com
• findthebest.motorcycleshows.com
• findthecoupons.com
• findthedata.com
• firms.privateequity.com
• franchises.fastfood.com
• ftb.cebotics.com
• game-consoles.tecca.com
• game-consoles.venturebeat.com
• gin.drinkhacker.com
• golf-courses.bunkershot.com
• gps-navigation.techcrunch.com
• gps-navigation.venturebeat.com
• green-cars.cleantechnica.com
• guns.dailycaller.com
• ham-radio.radiotower.com
• hdtv.techcrunch.com
• hdtv.venturebeat.com
• headphones.techcrunch.com
• headphones.venturebeat.com
• high-chairs.parenting.com
• highest-mountains.sciencedaily.com
• hiv-stats.realclearworld.com
• horsebreeds.petmd.com
• hospital-ratings.lifescript.com
• hr-jobs.findthelistings.com
• inventors.sciencedaily.com
• investment-advisors.minyanville.com
• investment-banks.minyanville.com
• iv-housing.dailynexus.com
• laptops.mobiletechreview.com
• laptops.techcrunch.com
• laptops.venturebeat.com
• lawschool.lawschoolexpert.com
• locategrave.org
• mammography-screening-centers.lifescript.com
• mba-programs.dealbreaker.com
• medigap-policies.findthedata.org
• military-branches.nationaljournal.com
• motorcycles.cycleworld.com
• mountain-bikes.outsideonline.com
• nannies.com
• nobel-prize-winners.sciencedaily.com
• nursing-homes.caregiverlist.com
• nursing-homes.silvercensus.com
• onlinecolleges.collegenews.com
• phones.androidauthority.com
• pickups.agriculture.com
• planets.realclearscience.com
• planets.sciencedaily.com
• plants.backyardgardener.com
• presidential-candidates.theblaze.com
• presidents.nationaljournal.com
• privateschools.parentinginformed.com
• processors.betanews.com
• project-management-software.venturebeat.com
• projectors.techcrunch.com
• pushcarts.golfdigest.com
• recovery-and-reinvestment-act.theblaze.com
• religions.theblaze.com
• reviews.creditcardadvice.com
• saving-accounts.bankingadvice.com
• sb-marinas.noozhawk.com
• sb-nonprofits.noozhawk.com
• scheduling-software.venturebeat.com
• scholarships.savingforcollege.com
• schools.nycprivateschoolsblog.com
• scooters.cycleworld.com
• smartphones.techcrunch.com
• smartphones.venturebeat.com
• solarpanels.motherearthnews.com
• sports-drinks.flotrack.org
• stables.thehorse.com
• state-economic-facts.nationaljournal.com
• steppers.shape.com
• strollers.parenting.com
• supplements.womenshealthmag.com
• tablets.androidauthority.com
• tablets.techcrunch.com
• tablets.venturebeat.com
• tabletsandstuff.com/tablet-comparison-chart
• tallest-buildings.sciencedaily.com
• technology.searchenginewatch.com
• telescopes.universetoday.com
• tequila.proof66.com
• texas-golf-courses.texasoutside.com
• tires.agriculture.com
• tractors.agriculture.com
• tsunamies.sciencedaily.com
• us-hurricanes.sciencedaily.com
• video-cameras.venturebeat.com
• volcanic-eruptions.com
• waterheaters.motherearthnews.com
• wetsuits.swellinfo.com
• whiskey.cocktailenthusiast.com
• whiskey.drinkoftheweek.com
• white-house-visitors.theblaze.com
• wineries.womenshealthmag.com

we have seen search results where a search engine didn’t robots.txt something out, or somebody takes a cookie cutter affiliate feed, they just warm it up and slap it out, there is no value add, there is no original content there and they say search results or some comparison shopping sites don’t put a lot of work into making it a useful site. They don’t add value. – Matt Cutts

That syndication partnership network also explains part of how FTB is able to get so many pages indexed by Google, as each of those syndication sources is linking back at FTB on (what I believe to be) every single page of the subdomains, and many of these subdomains are linked to from sitewide sidebar or footer links on the PR7 & PR8 tech blogs.

And so the PageRank shall flow ;)

Hundreds of thousands of hours (eg 200,000+) for 40 people is 5,000 hours per person. Considering that there are an average of 2,000 hours per work year, this would imply each employee spent 2.5 full years of work on this single aspect of the job. And that is if one ignores the (hundreds of?) millions of content pages on other sites.

How does TechCrunch describe the FTB partnership?

Here’s one reason to be excited: In its own small way, it combats the recent flood of crappy infographics. Most TechCrunch writers hate the infographics that show up in our inboxes— not because infographics have to be terrible, but because they’re often created by firms that are biased, have little expertise in the subject of the infographic, or both, so they pull random data from random sources to make their point.

Get that folks? TechCrunch hosting automated subdomains of syndicated content means less bad infographics. And more cat lives saved. Or something like that.

How does FTB describe this opportunity for publishers?

The gadget comparisons we built for TechCrunch are sticky and interactive resources comprised of thousands of SEO optimized pages. They help over 1 million visitors per month make informed decisions by providing accurate, clear and useful data.

SEO optimized pages? Hmm.

Your comparisons will include thousands of long-tail keywords and question/answer pages to ensure traffic is driven by a number of different search queries. Our proprietary Data Content Platform uses a mesh linking structure that maximizes the amount of pages indexed by search engines. Each month—mainly through organic search—our comparisons add millions of unique visitors to our partner’s websites.

Thousands of long-tail keyord & QnA pages? Mesh linking structure? Hmm.

If we expand the “view more” section at the footer of the page, what do we find?

Holy Batman.

Sorry that font is so small, the text needed reduced multiple sizes in order to fit on my extra large monitor, and then reduced again to fit the width of our blog.

Each listing in a comparison has a number of associated questions created around the data we collect.

For example, we collect data on the battery life of the Apple iPad.

An algorithm creates the question “How long does the Apple iPad tablet battery last?” and answers it

So now we have bots asking themselves questions that they answer themselves & then stuffing that in the index as content?

Yeah, sounds like human-driven editorial.

After all, it’s not like there are placeholder tokens on the auto-generated stuff

{parent_field}

Ooops.

Looks like I was wrong on that.

And automated “popular searches” pages? Nice!

As outrageous as the above is, they include undisclosed affiliate links in the content, and provided badge-based “awards” for things like the best casual dating sites, to help build links into their site.

That in turn led to them getting a bunch of porn backlinks.

If you submit an article to an article directory and someone else picks it up & posts it to a sketchy site you are a link spammer responsible for the actions of a third party.

But if you rate the best casual dating sites and get spammy porn links you are wonderful.

Content farming never really goes away. It only becomes more corporate.