What is the issue with content farming websites?

[BenVitale]

"Content farms" websites

I came across this article: Google Seeks to Weaken Search Engine Ranking of "Content Farming" Websites

What do you think of these "content farms"?
Who, which sites will be included in the label of content farms?
How will this affect bloggers like myself?

 

[AlephZero]

If Google can find a way to filter out 100 hits to 100 copies of the exact same piece of information, and just give me ONE hit on the original source, please can I have it implemented by yesterday!

If it zaps all the hits to a few million blogs that have no original content, well, that's just tough on the people who cut-and-pasted them.

 

[JaredJames]

I agree with AlephZero.

I'd also add there are a lot of websites which seem to incorporate your search result - you search for XYZ on Google and it returns a number of results. Within the top few you may note there are some exact hits that look promising. You click them and they end up taking you to a website full of adverts (again all showing what you searched for but leading to a load of unrelated rubbish) and they'll display your search phrase on the page as if showing you what you want. You click on any of these and you end up in god knows where, usually to some illegal site regarding torrents, chock full of malicious software.

 

[BenVitale]

I did some search on this topic, and found

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s anti-spam team, writes:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-search-and-search-engine-spam.html

Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in its index

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/using-data-to-fight-webspam.html

TechCrunch is referring to websites that that post any duplicate content word-for-word

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/21/go...-were-fixing-that-and-content-farms-are-next/

What about re-posting of material, even if it is sourced? Most bloggers that writes about political/economics/social issues do that. I do that too. Will I get the label of "content farm"? By the way mainstream media does the same.

 

[JaredJames]

Well it's one thing to take quotes and comment on them in a blog, but it's another to copy the entire article over (referenced or not).

By copying the entire article all you are doing duplicating the source material. Highly unnecessary and taking up valuable Google result spots.