14 DAY TRIAL // The age of the content farm is behind us. Well, maybe not entirely, but the once unstoppable content-churning machines are reshaping themselves for a web (read that: Google) that is less forgiving of poor quality content.
Last year, Yahoo acquired Associated Content, one of the leading 'content farms' on the web. But now it's shutting it down, the domain at least, and moving most of the content over to the brand new Yahoo Voices.
A lot of the stuff from Associated Content will live on at its new home, about two million different articles, videos and so on, but some content is getting dropped.
In fact, 75,000 articles that are no longer relevant or are of poor quality have been removed.
"Today we’re launching Yahoo! Voices – a new online home for more than two million pieces of original content, spanning thousands of different topics, created by more than 500,000 individual experts and enthusiasts," Yahoo explained.
"Yahoo! Voices replaces Associated Content as Yahoo! Contributor Network’s official digital library. Voices is where consumers and advertisers will find the Web’s most authentic perspectives and expertise on every topic in the world," it boasted.
This may very well be the final stage of the integration of Associated Content. But the stigma of the now defunct site and the fact that it was hit hard by the string of Panda Google algorithm updates, which focused on removing poor quality results, may have had a lot to do with the decision.
Everything is now housed over at Yahoo.com, which obviously enjoys a much better reputation and SEO juice than AssociatedContent.com.
Yahoo is also looking to improve the quality of the submissions and is issuing several guides and tips on how to write better for the new Yahoo Voices site, which will still largely depend on contributors.