[greyman]

But, doesn't Demand only occupy one slot in search engines result pages for a certain keyword search? Even if Demand would create billions of articles, one for each conceivable search term, other nine spots in first 10 search results are still available for others, aren't they?

All in all, I still think this is primary a Google problem, not Demand's. They can publish anything they want, it's their right protected under free speech. It's Google which should be concerned about quality of their pages.

[byrneseyeview]

The #1 search result gets about 40% of all organic clicks. And Demand Media has more than one property (eHow, Wikihow, Cracked, livestrong.com). So I wouldn't be surprised if there were some searches for which Demand Media got more than half of all traffic.

You are correct about this being Google's problem. These guys exist to exploit an arbitrage opportunity: Google's search algorithm picks them, and the average searcher's which-engine-do-I-choose algorithm picks Google. In the long run, one of these things will stop being true.

[qeorge]

Cracked is not owned by Demand Media. It was a second-rate competitor to MAD as a print magazine, but has found tremendous success online.

Their model is similar to Demand's in that it is UGC + payment, but that's about it. The topics are not generated by an algorithm, for instance.

[byrneseyeview]

http://www.demandmedia.com/brands/

I was surprised, too.

[skinnymuch]

Wow. Can't believe they own Cracked. Learning this made me die a little inside.