The content farms hurt most when I'm doing a focused query, e.g. trying to make a purchasing decision or discover a specific fact about a very particular topic.
Many times, when searching for specific products to buy, you get page after page of review aggregation sites filled with affiliate sales links, often with the same reviews, over and over again.
At other times, you get poorly written generic content farms that almost trap the reader with the hope of getting what he wants, until it eventually dawns on him that the site is basically a fluffed out set of wikipedia pages.
I was looking for motorbike gear some months ago, and ended up on this site. The odd thing about it is it looks a bit like a shop of some kind - "parts trade" and all that - and it even says "search through our large inventory of motorcycle parts", but it's not actually a shop, just a huge web of interlinked articles. The only ad at the current time is a static link to digitalroom.com.
Many times, when searching for specific products to buy, you get page after page of review aggregation sites filled with affiliate sales links, often with the same reviews, over and over again.
At other times, you get poorly written generic content farms that almost trap the reader with the hope of getting what he wants, until it eventually dawns on him that the site is basically a fluffed out set of wikipedia pages.
Here's one I reported to Google as search spam: http://www.motorcyclepartstrade.com/
I was looking for motorbike gear some months ago, and ended up on this site. The odd thing about it is it looks a bit like a shop of some kind - "parts trade" and all that - and it even says "search through our large inventory of motorcycle parts", but it's not actually a shop, just a huge web of interlinked articles. The only ad at the current time is a static link to digitalroom.com.