Who would win in a battle of the Facebook Ban Bot and the Google Panda?

A lot of buzz around Facebook’s Ban Bot that is taking out developers apps that they determine are spammy. Naturally like with the Panda update there is a lot of concern around the impact that will have on legitimate sites as well. Google’s Panda update in March of 2011 brought done both poor quality landing pages and search engine results as well as some actual valuable to end users kind of sites.

While many developers switched to looking at the opportunity that social media like Facebook offered after the Panda Update, they now many need to think twice. Facebook won’t put up with poor content, unethical behavior and poor content for their users. They are working hard, as they should, to keep their users happy.

The bad part of this is that good content usually suffers as well. The upswing? Well, it does appear that unlike Google, Facebook is willing to have a more human approach to fixing issues with the Ban Bot updates.

If you’re a consumer, then it’s likely something you’ll not notice and you’ll be content as you have been. If you’re a spammer, then you’ll not be very happy with facebook at all. And if you’re a legitimate business doing business with social media, then you better check your content, your ads and your apps, because you don’t want to be a another unhappy victim of the ferocious Facebook Ban Bot.

When Google announced this year that it was going to try to limit the exposure that content farms receive on their search engine, I have to be honest, that was the first time I heard the term ‘content farm’. Upon some investigation it was easy to discover what they meant. There are companies that are churning out data that is basically worthless but can still get placed high on the S.E.R.P (Search Engine Results Page). Companies can make money by placing ads on these pages and since users obviously do not want to see content farm results, they are likely to click an ad to get to a place with real information.

The question that as a writer immediately went off like fireworks in my brain was: How do you NOT write like a content farm? Or a different spin on the same question: what if my writing was somehow mistaken for ‘content farm’ like?

The answer is, as many things in life, somewhat vague but on the other hand also very obvious. The consumer has an objective in mind when they search. To learn something, to get an answer or education, to find information, to be entertained, to discover or to connect. If my writing doesn’t do any of those for you as the reader, well, then my content is no better than a content farm and really should be banished from the planet.

If however you can learn about writing smarter, find referrals to great sources, then my writing is indeed valuable to you and can proudly be considered worthy of finding it’s place on the internet. Does this mean my writing has to appeal to everyone?

No, it never will. Nothing that I know of that has ever been written, or ever will be written appeals to everyone. So, I know that my writing will not inspire everyone who conducts a google search and encounters my content, and that’s OK. But if you are indeed searching for things that are in my writing, and Google has considered that my writing and your search are a potential match, then I hope you will learn from and be engaged by it. And just maybe it will get you to think. Think about it.
How would you react if your website was labeled by Google as a ‘content farm’ and banned?

Site example that I find to be very much to be a content farm: Ehow.com

Here is an interesting article that outlines how the actual content farm writers view their own work: http://www.pbs.org/

What do I do if I drop my cell phone in the toilet?  Or, how can I fix my phone if it went through the washing machine?  Believe it or not, you just might be able to salvage your phone if you act quickly. 

Here’s the BIG tip:

Remove the battery from your cell phone and put the phone and the battery into a bowl of dry rice.  Let it stay in the rice for a day—maybe more if it got totally soaked and you didn’t act quickly on this.  Why would you put it into a bowl of rice?  Well, the rice will absorb the water from the phone and voila—your phone will be fixed.