Comments for Answers.com: 31 Million Copied and Pasted Web Pages Can't Go Wrong

Answers.com: 31 Million Copied and Pasted Web Pages Can't Go Wrong

2009-08-27T06:30:26Z

Earlier this week we looked at the top 50 web properties in the U.S., according to comScore, and analyzed the changes over the past year. The top 5 were almost the same, except for the entrance of Facebook at number 5. What really caught our eye though was the progress of several less glamorous brands up the comScore charts. We profiled one of them, Demand Media, yesterday. Today we look at a site that wasn't in the top 50 one year ago but is now ranked #26. The Answers.com site gets over 28 million unique visitors per month, according to comScore.

How has Answers.com achieved this stellar growth? The same way Demand Media has: sheer quantity of content.

UPDATE: Bob Rosenschein, CEO, Answers.com, left a comment on this post with some illuminating data points. He first notes that the majority of page views comes from WikiAnswers.com, which had 22M uniques in July '09 while Answers.com had 10M "with some overlap." What's more, he notes that "the growth in our traffic is almost entirely from our WikiAnswers site."

]]> Answers.com is a reference site, similar to The NY Times' About.com. It claims to have content on 5 million topics from "over 180 licensed sources" such as Barron's, Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. Much of the content we saw in our tests came from Wikipedia, however.

Answers.com is run by Answers Corporation, which also has Q&A site WikiAnswers.com in its stable.

How Answers.com Works

In some ways Answers.com is the same as Demand Media - both output huge amounts of practical, useful reference content. This content attracts Google's spiders, which is a big part of the success of both companies. That's probably where the similarities end, because Demand Media largely produces original content. Answers.com, on the other hand, is basically a giant aggregator of third-party content.

The difference was noticeable in an example query I did for both sites: what is an rfid chip? The eHow page on RFID chips was short, basic, uninspiring content. The result on Answers.com was a long, thorough article about RFID chips. Impressive... except the content is actually from Wikipedia. If you scroll right to the end of the page, you will see a single sentence acknowledging this. But most people would probably be unaware that it's not original content. Why? Because this Answers.com article is peppered with links to other Answers.com pages. This of course is great for SEO (search engine optimization). UPDATE: Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein commented that "we put a no-index on pages which contain only Wikipedia content, so that they do not even show up in Google's index."

Answers.com's modus operandi boils down to this: use content from other sources, judiciously replace all of the links to point to their own domain, and reap the page views that result from Google. It can use Wikipedia content so liberally because it is licensed under Creative Commons.

The Secret to Success: Millions of Pages Indexed by Google

Answers.com has a staggering number of pages indexed in Google: 31.8 million! This is only 11 million less than Wikipedia (currently 43.1 million). By comparison, Demand Media's eHow has 'just' 4,320,000 pieces of content indexed in Google. About.com has 6,150,000. ReadWriteWeb.com has 30,100.

Note that Answers.com isn't necessarily highly ranked in Google. Answers.com has a Page Rank of 7/10, whereas Wikipedia is a 9. ReadWriteWeb has a Page Rank of 8. A search on the phrase "what is an rfid chip?" in Google revealed that Wikipedia holds the top slot and Answers.com doesn't even make the first page. So we can fairly say that Google isn't rewarding Answers.com for the quality of its content - or more correctly, it isn't necessarily being linked to by high-quality sources like Wikipedia is.

Conclusion: Quantity, Quantity, Quantity

We noted yesterday that Demand Media largely competes on quantity instead of quality. Answers.com takes quantity to another level altogether - and it can do this because it produces little if any original content.

Just look at Answers.com's growth over the past couple of years. The results speak for themselves.

Comment from Ebbe on 2010-05-07

2010-05-07T07:55:11Z

I've used Answers.com regularly for years, way before they started WikiAnswers. It's great to be able to look up something in so many quality sources at once. Putting these results on one page is a great boon for the user. Contrasting different references gives great insight, and this is especially useful with the occasionally untrustworthy Wikipedia content.

In my view it's a shame this business model didn't make the company enough revenue on its own, and they had to go down the WikiAnswers route.

It used to be that looking something up in Google produced a lot of junk and required a lot of sifting. Looking something up in Answers.com produced instant quality results.

(No, I'm not affiliated with Answers.com...)

Comment from James on 2010-01-26

2010-01-26T20:59:11Z

As an information consumer I don't care who provides the information I'm looking for or how I get it. I don't care what business model is used. That's why aggregates like answers.com exist. They respond to and exploit needs that are out there

Comment from Lonny on 2009-12-31

2009-12-31T23:21:16Z

I so wish Google (and others) would just kill the pagerank of duplicate content sites (as they do to small SEO guys all the time). I can't stand to see eHow.com, answers.com, and those others in my results.

I always click the "x" but I know it's just for that one search term. I hope somehow that if enough of us do it, that Google will just ban them or send them to PR zero.

Comment from vizor on 2009-11-29

2009-11-29T23:52:57Z

I like it. Very much. And I can see how it has grown organically from where you where yesterday (and from before that too) which is cool.

Comment from Lisa on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T06:31:22Z

Demand now owns Answers.com

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2009-09-04T02:01:46Z

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Comment from Business Web Hosting on 2009-08-30

2009-08-31T01:17:23Z

I personally like yahoo answers.

Comment from roarks on 2009-08-28

2009-08-28T23:19:38Z

Richard, I commend you for doing a great bit of journalism for bringing these things up, first Demand, then this. It should all prompt us to wonder about the future of journalism, and how search engines are going to deal with this kind of aggregation/scraper sites in the coming years. Their scale, if left unchecked, could fill the web with repetitive, spammy stuff.

Will search engines protect their ad revenues and let these things slide? Or will they continue to focus on making their searches more relevant to users by helping users find quality content, in turn, gradually stop sending traffic to these useless sites without original content? Would be interesting to see how things unfold.

(BTW: The comparison to NYT's About might be a bit of a stretch. I think their stuff actually consists of original pieces written by paid writers, seemingly experts in their respective domains. Nothing sexy, but I can imagine some people finding that stuff useful.)

Comment from JC on 2009-08-28

2009-08-28T16:28:00Z

Your title "31 Million Copied and Pasted Web Pages Can't Go Wrong" is actually quite inaccurate, in fact it is a sure fire way to have your Google ranking decreased. The more unique pages you have the higher your traffic count will be from Google. This is why the wikianswers.com has been so successful, many unique user generated content pages on a high ranking domain means a lot of traffic and revenue.

If you studied the long term traffic graph of answers.com you would have seen a huge drop in traffic that corresponded to a "refresh" of the Google index(s).You would have also noted a corresponding drop in Answers stock price. (ANSW) The creation of wikianswers.com was the one thing that saved the company from financial ruin.

Copied and Pasted web pages will make short term gains in traffic, until Google gets wind and your tagged. Unique useful user generated content is king.

Comment from norbreck castle on 2009-08-27

2009-08-28T06:42:23Z

i use wikianswers some times when im finding reference to something.

Comment from Magnet Material on 2009-08-27

2009-08-28T01:54:28Z

we put a no-index on pages which contain only Wikipedia content, so that they do not even show up in Google's index.

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2009-08-28T00:59:57Z

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Comment from Steve on 2009-08-27

2009-08-28T00:48:51Z

You can call it what you want, but it's just a big content scraper site. Taking bits and pieces from here and there, and putting it together on one page.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T20:26:04Z

Bob, thank you for your illuminating comment. I've updated the post accordingly.

Comment from livemercial finn on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T18:13:20Z

I'd love to see their "Time on Site" and "Bounce Rate" stats.

Comment from Bob Rosenschein on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T14:47:53Z

Richard--

First, thank you for your thoughtful post. A few clarifications:

* The comScore #26 U.S. rank was based on 28M unique visitors to our sites. It was WikiAnswers that contributed 22M, and Reference Answers.com was 10M (with some overlap).

* The growth in our traffic is almost entirely from our WikiAnswers site, with 5M answers created by our great community, representing original content.

* We're proud of Reference Answers.com's millions of topics from over 250 licensed editorial sources from leading publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, Barron's, Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia University Press, McGraw-Hill, MarketWatch, Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, and Oxford University Press. And, of course, Wikipedia. We unify many of these disparate data sources onto a single page, one of our differentiators.

* BTW, we put a no-index on pages which contain only Wikipedia content, so that they do not even show up in Google’s index! We are also proud supporters of the Wikimedia Foundation and enjoy a good relationship with them. We just sponsored their Wikimania Conference in Buenos Aires this week.

* So, far from being our business model, traffic to Wikipedia content actually contributes a minor percentage of our overall traffic and revenue.

* The example you chose, “What is an RFID chip?”, went to a Wikipedia page. Had you asked slightly different questions, like “What is an RFID reader?” or “What are some uses of RFID?”, you would have found excellent answers from other sources on our site.

I hope this helps – and will be happy to clarify.

-- Bob Rosenschein, CEO, Answers.com

Comment from Harold on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T14:34:31Z

You have missed the larger story here.

Answers.com was growing, but not quickly, and losing money until they acquired WikiAnswers. The growth you see how in both revenue and pageviews, is largely from WikiAnswers. WikiAnswers produces entirely new, user-generated content.

The regular Answers.com, because of hefty licensing fees and other high costs, was a money loser. WikiAnswers is a home run.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T13:17:51Z

Chris, Aziz, thanks for your comments.

Re "But the tone implies there's something wrong with this. There is value in aggregating and reorganizing content. "

I'm not saying there's something wrong with this, however: having 31 million articles on the web without any original content (and stuffed with inbound links)? It's a somewhat cynical business model, in my view. Granted, there is some useful editing and additional content. But you're largely making money off the back of free user-generated content (Wikipedia) and replacing Wikipedia links inside the articles with your own to gain Google juice.

Having said that, Answers.com does appear to be a very well run business and what it does it does very well.

Comment from Aziz on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T13:09:22Z

I use to work at Answers where I was responsible for acquiring best-of-breed content from some of the most authoritative sources. If you do a search on Answers you will also find very detailed information about RFID from the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia http://www.answers.com/topic/rfid-technology. Yes Answers displays content from Wikipedia, however, they also have content from over 200 additional sources, including content from Oxford, Gale, Britanica, Marketwatch, West, Hoovers, Elsevier and many many others.

The reason Answers has been so successful growing traffic is because they have done a phenomenal job of growing their content. It is almost impossible for sites to grow traffic unless they can grow their content base. Furthermore, Answers provides a wonderful service. It is one of the few places you can go to on the web and get information / answers about virtually any subject and from best of breed sources. Users recognize this value and hence Answers popularity and rise in the rankings.

Aziz Akin
Founder & CEO
http://www.buzzfile.com

Comment from Chris on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T12:19:10Z

I'm the founder of WikiAnswers (originally created as FAQ Farm, sold to Answers.com in 2006). I appreciate your insights about quantity of content translating into quantity of search traffic. But the tone implies there's something wrong with this. There is value in aggregating and reorganizing content. For example, it can be useful for a student to have the Britannica entry next to the Wikipedia entry. This is the rationale for the Creative Commons license, and it's why Google still links to Answers.com for definitions of words. For example, search "chip" on Google and click the definition link in the upper-right corner. With WikiAnswers, of course, the value is in answers to specific questions instead of just encyclopedia entries.

Comment from hj on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T11:20:02Z

If anyone asked for a glimpse at a future being created by machine intelligence here it is:

'Intelligent' algorithms such as google and bing punishing creative human efforts while rewarding machine generated/repurposed content.

Future is so bright... 'intelligent' machine agents in their immense wisdom happily rewarding unethical behaviors while kicking creative citizens to the curb.

Comment from Alper on 2009-08-27

2009-08-27T08:51:40Z

Nice to see these SEO people raping the web and making a fortune while doing it. Is Google looking to fix search to exclude these guys?

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2009-08-27T07:38:16Z

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Comment from Trigeia on 2009-08-26

2009-08-27T06:24:40Z

There is alot to learn from companies such as Answers.com and Demand Media. They have truly harnessed the power of the web to their advantage

Demand Media Takes Minority Stake in Coveritlive; Will Use it With Pluck http://www.trigeia.com/article.php?id=64375