On Bin Laden Killing Tech Blogging
The information in the image above is not surprising at all. But still pathetic.
Imagine that, you write 35 200-word posts featuring the words “Bin Laden” in the headline and they pull in traffic on the day it’s one of the most searched terms ever.
Were any of those stories really about technology? A few, maybe. But none were given the actual attention that a story of such magnitude deserves. It was a pure traffic/SEO play.
This is the state of tech blogging these days. It’s shifting more towards a mixture of quick-posted nonsense and pure SEO plays.
It’s nothing new, but it’s getting worse.
It used to be that the advertising wasn’t there to really support these plays long term. But as more money is flooding online to spend post-downturn (as the print world continues to collapse), that’s no longer the case. There will always be someone who advertises against anything that gets pageviews.
The only thing that will stop this is Google taking the same type of action against this gaming as they have against the larger content farms. That line, it seems to me, is quickly blurring. But I just can’t see Google doing that.
Exploiting Bin Laden’s death is one thing. Just wait until we have a real national tragedy that the tech blogs contort themselves to exploit for the pageviews.
Is there any question we’ll see that? Hell, some of these guys are probably rooting for it.
Welcome to the sad state of our industry. CONGRATS.
Behold! A massive amount of SEO bait caught in the wild:
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