Friday, February 25, 2011

Can Google Defeat Content Farms And Splogs?

Google has finally done something that justifies its reputation and capabilities. It has come heavily upon content farming sites and splogs. By removing content farming sites and splogs and by placing low quality and contents scrapping sites at very low search level, Google is going to make its search results more relevant and meaningful.

However, not everything is in order at Google to achieve this purpose. Firstly, copyright violation and plagiarism is abundant not only on personal domains but also upon Google’s platforms like Blogspot. Google does not have a stringent policy against these offenders.

In fact, Google’s policies, especially online advertisements like Adsence, are going against original contents providers and in favour of copyright violators. The DMCA procedure of Google for redressing copyright violations is not only cumbersome and ineffective, but is also favouring contents infringers. To a greater extent it also appears that through Adsence program, Google is actively encouraging content farming, splogs and copyright violations.

Secondly, although the tweaking of search algorithm by Google has already shown improvements in Google search results, yet indexing of new articles has become very slow. This is especially true for those sites that have submitted an application for inclusion in Google news. If the articles are not indexed properly, others pick up the same and their duplicate contents appear first on the search results.

Respecting the intellectual property rights, especially copyright, of the original contents providers and awarding them with the search place they deserve at Google would benefit both Google and the original contents providers.

Presently, nothing like this is happening and Google’s claims of better search results and respecting original content provider’s interest is still not achievable. Google must put in place a system that is more responsive and friendly for original contents providers. This system must be such that spam reports must be immediately redressed and copyright violations that are apparently and patently visible must be urgently taken care of.

For the time being, content farming sites, splogs and copyright violators are defeating Google and other search engines are encashing upon this fact. I hope Google would seriously deliberate upon these aspects.