Kate Kaye at ClickZ uncovers an interesting connection between Google’s VP of Ad Sales Tim Armstrong and potential search spam. In “Bottom Slurping for Google Juice,” Kaye points out that Associated Content, a content production house theoretically aimed at creating a marketplace for aspiring writers, seems to be responsible for creating some made-for-AdSense type of content.
The “content producers” are taught to write keyword-heavy content, and they’re paid according to the amount of traffic their creations will drive. Surprise, surprise — Associated employs an algorithm that estimates the number of unique visitors that will be driven to that content in coming months, and pays writers upfront accordingly.
A few examples from an Associated Content customer that Kaye looked at were very low-quality, keyword-stuffed pages, though she admits those pages are not necessarily products of AC writers. Even if those specific examples are not, the argument remains as to whether the service is about creating quality content or adding keywords to a page to better target ads, such as those sold by Google.