Original Content, Search Engines, and The Almighty Dollar

I know that this has happened to most of us. You do a google search for information on a given subject and you start hitting the sites to gather information. After a while, you start getting a sense of deja vu. All this material seems vaguely familiar. Then you realize, it's all the same, except some of the wording or perhaps the organization.

Here's what Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal learned about freelance writing, cutting and pasting, and advertising.

There is a new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web: a slowly rising tide of "original content" on Internet sites that is at best worthless, and at worst possibly even dangerously inaccurate.

I should know; I've been writing some of the stuff myself.

Understanding what's happening requires a lesson in modern Web economics. If there is a topic in the news, people will be searching on it. If you can get those searchers to land on a seemingly authoritative page you've set up, you can make money from their arrival. Via ads, for instance.

online.wsj.com